Japan-based SoftBank Group has announced its second Vision Fund with focus on AI-based technology. The new fund, called the Vision Fund 2, has attracted participation from Apple, Foxconn, Microsoft and other tech companies and investors.
According to SoftBank, the fund’s capital has touched about $108 billion, based on memoranda of understandings, with own investment to the tune of $38 billion. Apple and Foxconn were investors in the first Vision Fund, too. “The objective of the fund is to facilitate the continued acceleration of the AI revolution through investment in market-leading, tech-enabled growth companies,” SoftBank said in its statement.
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However, the absence of state and corporate backers from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, as well as investment bank Goldman Sachs, who played a significant role in the first fund, has raised eyebrows. SoftBank said it was still talking to potential investors and that it expected the fund’s anticipated capital to grow.
Unlike the first fund, the second fund's investor base reflects diversification beyond the Middle East that provided most of the first $100-billion fund’s outside capital as SoftBank touts industry-beating returns. The first fund had generated a 45 per cent internal rate of return for investors in its common shares, SoftBank had said in May.
The first Vision Fund launched two years ago with $60 billion had already burned through much of its capital with investments in over 80 late-stage tech startups, including Uber.