SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son praised AI during the company's annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday, saying the firm will "rule the world" and win the latest generative AI race thanks to its heavy investment in startups and its majority stake in UK-based chip designer Arm.
Son typically uses his company's annual shareholder meeting to present his own bold, if eccentric vision for the future. His presentation this year still made some bold predictions, but was overall more tame compared to previous years.
Since 2017, SoftBank has raised more than $100 billion to invest in technology startups through its Vision Fund, making a name for itself by plowing money into companies and hoping they could outdo competitors.
The fund's performance has cast something of a shadow over Son. SoftBank's biggest investments include the beleaguered coworking office company WeWork and others like Wag, an on-demand dog walking service. SoftBank invested $375 million in the recently-shuttered Zume, a startup that used robots to produce pizzas out of the back of delivery vans.
The Vision Fund is reportedly planning to let go some employees this week following quarter after quarter of losses; it's also written down investments and tried to sell off stakes in other companies. It has netted some wins, however, including investments in TikTok owner ByteDance and DoorDash.
Despite some catastrophic missteps, Son's latest presentation was optimistic about SoftBank's future, thanks to AI. Arm, a key player in the design of AI chipsets and SoftBank's AI ambitions, is anticipated to go public soon.
Son often invests based on the futuristic predictions outlined in his presentations. In a past presentation, Son predicted that life expectancy would increase to over 200 by the year 2400 and that humans will someday learn to coexist with intelligent robots.
In 2020 near the start of the coronavirus pandemic, Son used ominous imagery to describe the challenges some startups faced, likening the situation to the Great Depression. In another graphic from the same presentation, he described how startups would fall into a "Valley of Coronavirus," but that some companies would gain wings and fly out of the valley better than before.
In another presentation from 2017, Son describes SoftBank's 30-year vision for the future, which involves telepathy, cloned sheep, and computer-brain interfaces — that final one doesn't seem as crazy now considering Elon Musk's founding of Neuralink. Son has repeatedly talked about an "information revolution" in which access to more knowledge through the internet will result in greater happiness.
Son spent most of the presentation this year discussing AI's potential, where excitement has soared on the back of new generative AI technology like OpenAI's ChatGPT.
Below are some slides from SoftBank's latest investor presentation:
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