According to foreign media reports, as a legendary figure in the field of technology investment, Sun Zhengyi, the founder of SoftBank, has gained great fame for investing in companies such as Alibaba. But in recent years, he has overturned his investments in NVIDIA and OpenAI, failing to catch up with the biggest trend of AI.
Screenshot of webpage
Screenshot of webpage
On June 21st local time, Sun Zhengyi reviewed a major mistake in his investment career at SoftBank's annual shareholder meeting:
Premature clearance of NVIDIA stocks resulted in missing out on potential returns of up to $150 billion (approximately RMB 1.1 trillion). "It's really frustrating to think of those things I missed. I regret selling NVIDIA stocks so much."
"Missing a big fish"
It is reported that SoftBank sold all its 4.9% stake in Nvidia in 2019 and received an investment return of $3.3 billion. At that time, Sun Zhengyi believed that locking in returns was a wise move, and the cost of SoftBank's purchase of Nvidia stock was only $700 million.
But in today's view, this decision is undoubtedly a huge mistake.
Under the wave of investment in artificial intelligence, Nvidia has been making great strides in the past two years and briefly became the world's most valuable listed company last week. It fell to second place after Microsoft last Thursday. As of last Friday's close, Nvidia's market value remained as high as $3.11 trillion, only slightly lower than Apple's $3.18 trillion and Microsoft's $3.34 trillion.
If SoftBank insists on holding Nvidia, its shares will be worth $160 billion today. This means that SoftBank missed out on over $150 billion in profits when clearing NVIDIA in 2019.
Sun Zhengyi regretfully said, "I missed a big fish."
According to Sun Zhengyi, he had planned to include Nvidia in SoftBank's technological landscape and had in-depth acquisition negotiations with Nvidia CEO Huang Renxun one month after acquiring chip design company ARM.
Sun Zhengyi hoped to acquire Nvidia and privatize the company, while retaining Huang Renxun as the leader, but the negotiations were ultimately unsuccessful. In addition, he had intended to sell ARM under SoftBank to Nvidia, but due to antitrust issues, this plan was also not realized.
It is worth noting that besides Nvidia, Sun Zhengyi also ventured into the field of artificial intelligence newcomer OpenAI. Sun Zhengyi revealed that he had originally planned to invest in OpenAI, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman ultimately decided to accept Microsoft's investment.
Despite missing out on NVIDIA and OpenAI, Sun Zhengyi's bet on ARM was a huge success and one of his most successful investment examples.
SoftBank's Sun Zhengyi speaks boldly again
According to the Daily Economic News, after announcing two consecutive quarters of profitability, Sun Zhengyi, the helm of SoftBank Group, recently made bold remarks, not only depicting his ambition to create "thousands of times smarter than humans" artificial intelligence, but also proposing to build a super artificial intelligence era (ASI), "no matter what form, I will pursue ASI.".
Previously, Nikkei Asia reported that Arm Holdings, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group, had planned to venture into the field of artificial intelligence chips, preparing to establish a dedicated artificial intelligence chip department, and planned to complete the construction of prototype products before the spring of 2025. Arm would bear the initial development costs, and SoftBank would also participate in the investment.
When it comes to the future prospects of Arm, Sun Zhengyi said that the company's chips will support a thriving ecosystem composed of robots and powerful data centers, which can jointly treat cancer, clean houses, and play with children.
In the past two days, Sun Zhengyi has been quite active, frequently speaking on the topic of artificial intelligence.
According to foreign media reports, on June 20th, he claimed that when making the next major technology investment, he was ready to take a gamble. "The next big project may be a great success or a disastrous defeat, but SoftBank has no choice but to try." He emphasized that SoftBank Group will seek and invest in "seeds for future development", mainly outside of Japan.
The statement also did not disclose significant investments or specific details, but Sun Zhengyi announced a new direction for SoftBank Group to expand its renewable energy generation business to help meet the electricity demand for generative artificial intelligence, especially in the United States.
In fact, the wave of artificial intelligence is rescuing SoftBank from its previous investment quagmire. Last month, SoftBank Group released its 2023 financial report as of March 31, 2024, as well as its quarterly report from January to March this year. The quarterly data showed that SoftBank Group's net profit for the fourth quarter was 231.1 billion yen, which was its second quarter of profitability, with a loss of 57.6 billion yen in the same period last year. Throughout the year, SoftBank Group achieved a revenue of 6.76 trillion yen, a year-on-year increase of 2.8%; The net profit was 209.2 billion yen, while the loss for the 2022 fiscal year was 789.8 billion yen; The net profit attributable to the owners of the parent company was a loss of 227.6 billion yen, compared to a loss of 970.1 billion yen in the previous fiscal year.
After the release of the previous quarter's financial report, Yoshimitsu Goto, Chief Financial Officer of SoftBank, stated that the company has undergone a significant transformation from being centered around Alibaba to being centered around artificial intelligence. Recently, Yoshimitsu Goto proposed that SoftBank now needs to take on more risks, especially in the context of accelerated development of artificial intelligence. "Not taking on risks is the biggest risk for us.".