Japan’s SoftBank Shows interest in Artificial Intelligence Stocks
SoftBank (Japan) plans to invest nearly $9 billion in artificial intelligence (AI). The company’s investments and spending commitments have doubled in the past 12 months since its CEO announced an “immune offensive” to $8.9 billion, the Financial Times (FT) reports.
SoftBank Chief Financial Officer.
“We will in principle maintain the same trend in terms of the pace of investment activities. From now on, we want to increase investments in AI companies,” SoftBank Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto told the FT.
The reason we keep our balance sheet at a safe level is that we want to be prepared, and we want to be flexible in case there is something that we need to do moving forward,” he added. Last year, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son predicted that artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a computer system that can match or surpass human thought and reasoning — would become 10 times more powerful than humanity by the end of this decade. Take advantage of it or get left behind,” Son said.
SoftBank Report about AI Stocks
The report said SoftBank faces stiff competition in the AI space, as tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google have invested billions in partnerships with startups building AI models. In addition, top venture capital firms are hoping to do business with firms building AI products and applications.
In fact, reports last week said Microsoft and Amazon have allocated more than $40 billion combined for AI-related and data center projects this year.
SoftBank, Microsoft and Amazon investments
For Microsoft, this means plans to invest more than $16 billion in various countries, including France, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Spain and Indonesia, The Wall Street Journal reported. Amazon, on the other hand, has earmarked investments of $15 billion in Japan, $9 billion in Singapore, $5 billion in Mexico and $1.3 billion in France.
The move to invest heavily in AI infrastructure overseas is driven by a desire to meet the growing global demand for AI technologies, as well as the need to build data centres in regions where the shift towards cloud computing is taking place, ensuring processing times are fast while data remains secure and private.
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Hello, My name is Gurvinder Singh, born in Punjab, India, completed my Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com) degree from Panjab University. Apart from my professional pursuits, I had a keen interest in finance-related hobbies. I actively manages my investment portfolio, carefully researching and analyzing various stocks and market trends to make informed financial decisions. With a goal of financial empowerment and wealth accumulation, I dedicated to continuous learning and improvement in my financial endeavors.
