Masayoshi Son, the founder and CEO of SoftBank, is reportedly making an aggressive, “all-in” bet on artificial intelligence, committing SoftBank's substantial financial resources to AI ventures. This strategy, likened to gambling by some, has seen SoftBank allocate an estimated $64.6 billion to OpenAI, holding approximately a 13% ownership stake in the ChatGPT creator. To finance a portion of this, the group secured a $40 billion bridge loan and has borrowed against its existing OpenAI stake, indicating the significant financial leverage involved in this concentrated investment.
Son's vision extends beyond software, with a strong focus on building AI infrastructure and physical AI. He is spearheading a $500 billion project named Stargate, in collaboration with Oracle, OpenAI, and Abu Dhabi’s MGX, aimed at scaling up U.S. data centers and AI infrastructure to 10 gigawatts by 2029. This ambitious project, though still in early stages with only about $10 billion deployed in Abilene, Texas, has been met with skepticism from economists and investors due to its high cost and uncertain revenue generation.
Despite concerns about the high-risk nature of his investments and warnings from economists about an AI bubble, Son remains steadfast. He has publicly dismissed the notion of an AI bubble as "blasphemy" and "an insult," believing the AI revolution to be potentially 50 times larger than the dot-com boom. His long-term prediction is that artificial superintelligence (ASI) will become 10,000 times smarter than humans within a decade and, combined with physical AI like humanoid robotics, will constitute 10% of global GDP in 10 to 15 years, rising to 30% over 30 years. This conviction has led S&P to lower its outlook on SoftBank’s credit due to the potential liquidity risks associated with the significant OpenAI exposure.
Son’s track record includes both monumental successes, such as his $20 million investment in Alibaba yielding close to $200 billion at its peak, and notable failures, like the $18.5 billion ploughed into WeWork. However, his recent AI ventures have seen SoftBank's stock hit record highs, making him Japan's richest man again and allowing the company to post a $20.7 billion profit for the nine months through December. He expresses a desire to continue working into his seventies to realize his vision of artificial superintelligence, seeing this current AI wave as an all-encompassing transformation affecting every industry.
