As India makes strides in artificial intelligence (AI), SoftBank’s Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son has said that the country can become the AI chip capital of the world.
During a meeting with prominent Indian startup founders in the national capital, Son, who has invested in several companies across the country, expressed his intention to increase his investments in AI in India in the coming years. This marked his first visit to India in nearly two years. He was also reported to have met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, though no official statement regarding the meeting has been released.
SoftBank has invested in several Indian startups, including Snapdeal, Ola, Oyo, Housing.com, and Grofers (now Blinkit and a Zomato company).
Son had earlier declared that SoftBank would invest $10 billion in India over the coming years.
As the generative AI race heats up, SoftBank CEO was reportedly aiming to raise about $100 billion for his AI venture, reports surfaced earlier this year.
Japan's investment major swung to its biggest quarterly profit in two years in the September quarter, owing to the growing number of IPOs in the Indian markets.
SoftBank reported a net income of 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion) for the September quarter, a stark turnaround from last year’s net loss of 931 billion yen. The tech conglomerate’s gains were driven by rising share prices of publicly listed Indian companies within its Vision Fund investments.
"After we were making large losses in the Vision Funds, we were very conservative. So now we were able to generate good profits as a result of learning from that", SoftBank Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said after the earnings.
The two Vision Funds fully or partially exited investments totaling $1.85 billion. This included complete exits from 10 portfolio companies, such as the digital payment firm Paytm.