(Bloomberg) — SoftBank Group Corp.’s founder Masayoshi Son launched a second Vision Fund, seeking to extend his reign as the world’s most influential technology investor.
The Japanese conglomerate will commit $38 billion to Vision Fund 2 with the goal of raising a total of $108 billion, SoftBank said in a statement Friday. Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp., sovereign wealth fund of Kazakhstan and a number of Japanese finance companies are also expected to contribute capital, SoftBank said.
Son is aiming to raise a new massive fund every two or three years to take advantage of opportunities to invest in cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence and autonomous driving. SoftBank in June disclosed that the Vision Fund has earned 62% returns so far after making 71 investments for a total of $64.2 billion. And while several of its portfolio companies — Uber Technologies Inc. and Slack Technologies Inc. — have gone public, profitable exits might still be years away.
Saudi Arabia, the primary backer of the first Vision Fund, was not listed as an investor in the second fund.
To contact the reporter on this story: Pavel Alpeyev in Tokyo at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Edwin Chan at [email protected], Peter Elstrom
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