SoftBank’s $100 Billion Vision Fund

SoftBank Investment Advisers is the corporate venture arm of the multi-billion Japanese telecom giant SoftBank Group. The firm aims to make big investments in the tech sector and make waves with the announcement of their flagship “Vision Fund” that has raised ~$100B of investor capital. From reading their site, I see that they’ve gained interest from some key players on the mobile space, like Apple, Foxconn, and Qualcomm. Right off the bat, I know they probably have some of the best domain expertise is mobile out there, with SoftBank being a giant telecom company themselves. They’ve also collected big money from the middle east with $45B from Sudi Arabia Public Investment Fund and $15B from Mubadala Investment Company. Mubadala’s CEO, Khaldoon Al Mubarak had a recent segment with CNBC where said his firm wanted exposure to AI, VR and e-commerce.

Taking a look at where they’ve allocated capital, it seems that they are investing in their primary circle of competence. Here’s where the money has gone so far in late 2017 (Top 10 holdings):

• ARM Holdings – $8.2B
  • ARM makes microchips that are used in smartphones designed by large tech companies like Apple and Samsung. They’re the largest tech company in the UK. They specialize in Intellectual Property, Processors, CPU, Electronics Design, Software, and IoT. Softbank is very bullish on their dominant market position in the space. In a recent interview, Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank stated that he believes ARM will be bigger than Google (Alphabet).
• NVIDIA (NVDA) – $5B
  • NVIDIA is a chip maker that’s moving into development of AI and self-driving tech. Their invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market, modern computer graphics, and parallel computing.
• WeWork – $4.4B
  • WeWork is a real estate company that’s know for it’s fancy co-working spaces in the world’s biggest cities. They lease buildings and transform them into collaborative work spaces for entrepreneurs, startups, and even some established companies.
• Flipkart – $2.5B
  • Flipkart is India’s largest e-commerce marketplace with a registered customer base of over 100 million. They’re they’re the Amazon of India.
• OneWeb Satellites – $1.2B
  • OneWeb produces fleets of small satellites that provide affordable internet access worldwide. The company plans to launch into low earth orbit in 2018.
• Roivant Sciences – $1.1B
  • Roivant is a biotech firm that delivers R&D solutions to large biopharmaceutical companies by completing the clinical development of promising drug candidates.
• Fanatics – $1B
  • Fanatics is a sports e-commence company offering fan gear via its Fanatics, FansEdge, Kitbag and Majestic brands, as well as sports collectibles and memorabilia through Fanatics Authentic.
• SoFi – $1B
  • SoFi is an online lending company offering products including student loan refinancing, personal loans, mortgages and wealth management.
• Improbable – $0.5B
  • Improbable builds technology designed to help solve problems and enable the creation of new realities in Augmenter Reality  (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR).
• Vir Biotechnology – $0.5B
  • Vir brings together cutting-edge innovations with scientific expertise and management to take on infectious diseases for which solutions are non-existent or inadequate.

Now unfortunately, a majority of these companies are private, so there’s no way for individual investors to fully piggyback on SoftBank’s extreme domain expertise outside going long NVDA. I plan on keeping a monthly or quarterly update on the status of this fund, to let readers know where they are allocating capital and what opportunities exist to follow their strategy. Their investing arm is located in London based on their LinkedIn, however, many of the analyst investing on behalf of the fund appear to be located in the SF Bay Area. Keep posted for more info.