After the successful offering of its Arm company, SoftBank is seeking deals in artificial intelligence (AI), including a prospective investment in OpenAI, the Financial Times reported on Saturday.

Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of SoftBank, plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in artificial intelligence, according to the newspaper, which cited two people familiar with Son’s thinking.

In June, Son announced that his tech investing company intended to change its strategy to go “offence mode” in light of the euphoria surrounding AI advancements.

According to FT, the Japanese tech investment firm might also try to partner broadly with OpenAI, the company that makes ChatGPT.

Son has expressed his interest for AI technology as a “heavy user” of ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot from Microsoft-backed company OpenAI.

Additionally, he claimed that he speaks with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman “almost every day.”

According to the report, SoftBank is also considering a number of alternatives to OpenAI, including a potential acquisition of Graphcore, a UK-based manufacturer of AI chips.

Graphcore denied there had been any attempt or approach from SoftBank to acquire the business in an email response to Reuters.

Requests for comment from SoftBank and OpenAI did not immediately receive a response.

Seven years after SoftBank purchased Arm for $32 billion in a private transaction, the chip designer achieved a $54.5 billion value in its initial public offering (IPO) in the United States on Wednesday.

After its Vision Fund went to the black for the first time in six quarters, SoftBank said it was dipping its toes back into fresh investments in August despite posting an unexpected loss.

The massive investment firm has been operating in “defence mode” since May 2022, when tech valuations collapsed as a result of dramatically increased interest rates and worries in the global banking industry.

(Adapted from FT.com)

Categories: Economy & Finance, Entrepreneurship, Regulations & Legal, Strategy, Uncategorized