Softbank Bets The Ranch On AI
SoftBank Group raised about $1.86 billion via dollar and euro bond sales in one of the biggest foreign-currency deals by a Japanese company this year.
This is big news.
Softbank is one of the most prominent venture capitalist funds in the world and they plan on deploying the capital solely into generative artificial intelligence.
Many of these heavyweights from Asia, and the Middle East, and other billionaires around the finance world are chomping at the bit to get a piece of American AI firms.
This trend is in the early innings and won’t slow down.
It’s interesting that Softbank raised the currency in dollars and euros which is another bet on the Japanese yen strengthening and the Fed cutting rates.
The Yen has been one of the worst-performing currencies in the past few years and there is a chance this move could blow up in Softbank’s face.
The dollar is strong and has been increasingly strong lately as the Fed stays higher for longer.
However, if the dollar does get stronger, it will mean that Softbank will need to pay higher costs. Even that said, they will still dive head-first into AI.
My belief is that their CEO Masayoshi Son, who I know very well, will bet the ranch on AI considering he sold out of his Nvidia shares in 2022 and calls it the “fish that got away.”
He rues leaving hundreds of billions of dollars in profits on the table and I don’t believe he is willing to allow that to happen again.
So he will approach these new investments as an “all or nothing” all guns blazing type of strategy.
In its first non-yen debt offering since 2021, billionaire Masayoshi Son’s company priced two dollar tranches totaling $900 million and two euro tranches raising €900 million ($964 million).
It’s not only Softbank, it’s also other Japanese companies looking for ample liquidity.
SoftBank joins a bond bonanza by issuers from Asia and elsewhere including even bigger deals from fellow Japanese borrowers such as Takeda Pharmaceutical and Rakuten.
The Japanese firm this year directly invested $200 million into Tempus AI, a startup that analyzes medical data for doctors and patients to come up with better treatments. More recently, it backed Perplexity AI at a $3 billion valuation, betting on a firm that aims to use AI to compete with Alphabet’s Google search.
Longer term, SoftBank is working on a plan to deploy some $100 billion into AI-related chips in a project dubbed Izanagi, Bloomberg News reported in February.
My belief here is that Softbank and other Japanese companies are on the verge of deploying over $1 trillion of new money into generative artificial companies in America.
There is a reason why leading AI companies like Nvidia (NVDA) have surged to the skies and a lot of it is foreign money coming chasing the new hot trend.
I don’t believe this trend will stop will money from all corners of the globe from flooding the US markets chasing the few quality AI companies.
The ultimate takeaway is that the best companies connected the generative artificial intelligence are at the beginning of a huge run in share price that will extend years into the future.
Don’t fight the trend – especially the biggest ones in the world.
