"I chat with ChatGPT every day," Masayoshi Son: A huge revolution is coming, SoftBank will eventually rule the world!

Longbridge Dolphin CEO Masayoshi Son, who has not appeared in public for 7 months, has recently been contemplating life and his struggling business, and has found a new toy: ChatGPT.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, Masayoshi Son attended two consecutive shareholder meetings of SoftBank Group. He said at the shareholder meeting that he is a heavy user of ChatGPT and has been studying AI every day recently. The huge losses of the past two years once made him "cry for several days", but now the AI wave has provided new opportunities, and SoftBank Group "will eventually dominate the world".

Optimistic about AI, SoftBank will shift from "defense mode" to "attack mode"

Since handing over SoftBank's daily management to CFO Yoshimitsu Goto and other executives in November last year, Masayoshi Son has disappeared from public view for 7 months.

He personally presided over the group's shareholder meeting on Wednesday, the first time in four years.

He said at the meeting that SoftBank has been focusing on "defense" in the past period of time, and the cash on hand has gradually accumulated to 5 trillion yen (approximately US$35.3 billion). It is time to shift to "attack mode".

He enthusiastically praised the revolutionary nature of AI technology at the shareholder meeting and believed that this is SoftBank's hope for a turnaround:

"What I am most interested in and studying is the AI revolution. I believe that humans will be surpassed by computers or AI, and we hope to become the leader in the field of AI."

When he attended the shareholder meeting of SoftBank's telecommunications subsidiary on Tuesday, Masayoshi Son also said that he is a "heavy user" of ChatGPT and believes that ChatGPT is "amazing". He believes that "a huge revolution is coming." In the past few months, he has often discussed with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman how to create a Japanese version of ChatGPT.

Masayoshi Son added that SoftBank's tens of billions of dollars in technology investments in the past have provided bullets for the counterattack, and several unicorns may emerge from the more than 500 startups he has invested in, "and some buds are about to bloom."

As early as about a year ago, Masayoshi Son said that SoftBank will maintain a "defense mode" until the financial market turns warm.

Under the defense mode, SoftBank's Vision Fund has almost stopped new investments. In the second quarter of this year, the Vision Fund only participated in the financing of 7 startups, with a total amount of approximately US$550 million. In the second quarter of 2021, this number was US$15.6 billion.

Looking forward to the future of shifting to "attack mode", Masayoshi Son said:

"We will not rest. We will become more fierce... SoftBank Group will not be frightened by some short-term losses, and we will eventually dominate the world."

When SoftBank suffered huge losses, Masayoshi Son once cried

SoftBank's shift to defensive mode has reasons. Throughout 2021, the Vision Fund invested $38 billion in more than 180 companies, setting a record for the highest annual investment amount in the venture capital field.

However, the bear market headwind in 2022 caused the Vision Fund, which had heavily bet on technology startups, to suffer heavy losses. Since April last year, technology stocks have suffered a devastating defeat, and the Vision Fund has suffered tens of billions of dollars in losses for five consecutive quarters, recording a record loss of $32 billion for the entire 2022 fiscal year, reducing its bets on star targets such as FTX and Katerra to zero.

At the shareholder meeting on Wednesday, 65-year-old Masayoshi Son calmly revealed the bitter fruit of his investment failure to the world: "Since October, I have been thinking about how many years I have left to live, and sometimes I feel very empty. 'Is this enough?' Is this it? I cried and cried, and couldn't stop for several days."

But soon, Masayoshi Son recovered from the setback and began to focus on the emerging AI wave. In March of this year, SoftBank has formed a team of thousands of people to develop the Japanese version of ChatGPT. Just last week, Masayoshi Son also met with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who visited Tokyo.

He enthusiastically described the future world of AI popularization at the shareholder meeting: "When your grandson reaches our age, I believe they will live in a world where computers are ten thousand times smarter than the sum of all human wisdom."

However, the slightly embarrassing fact is that although Masayoshi Son is now singing the praises of AI, he did realize the potential of AI many years ago, but he did not make the right bet.

In early 2019, he sold about 5% of his Nvidia shares for about $3.6 billion. These shares are now worth more than $50 billion. And the companies he had previously bet heavily on, such as WeWork, Didi, and GoTo, have little to do with AI.

However, SoftBank has now invested in several AI startups, including Obente and Eightfold, and Masayoshi Son said: "If you invest in one or two hot products, they will make up for all your mistakes."

In addition, investors asked about the issue of SoftBank's successor. In response, Masayoshi Son said that he is very, very excited about the future and will continue to run SoftBank. He has no plans to hand over the reins or find an ideal successor.

"I'm having too much fun."

ARM's listing progress is smooth

At the beginning of this year, SoftBank cleared its holdings of Alibaba shares, and this legendary investment case with a return of 2,000 times has come to an end. Among SoftBank's series of investment portfolios, the most eye-catching one now is ARM, the chip design company acquired in 2016. ARM's IPO is one of the most important tasks for Masayoshi Son in recent months. SoftBank CFO Yoshimitsu Goto said that ARM's IPO is currently "progressing smoothly."

At Wednesday's shareholder meeting, Masayoshi Son...

Just last week, according to Bloomberg, potential strategic investors such as Intel are discussing participating in ARM's IPO.

ARM is the world's leading chip architecture design company. Its chip architecture is used by companies such as Nvidia, Qualcomm, AMD, Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, including Apple's A-series chips and Huawei's Kirin series chips.

In 2016, SoftBank acquired ARM for $32 billion. However, in recent years, due to the continuous losses of the SoftBank Vision Fund, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has been eager to sell ARM to recover funds. In 2020, Nvidia attempted to acquire ARM for $40 billion, but failed due to regulatory obstacles. Since then, Masayoshi Son has been pushing for ARM's IPO.

According to Reuters' report in March, ARM will be listed on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in the United States later this year and seeks to raise $8 billion to $10 billion, making it the largest IPO in the world this year.

Generally, if a major investor can be introduced before a company's IPO, it can boost market sentiment and attract more people to participate in the IPO. If the negotiations are successful, Intel will eventually be listed in ARM's IPO prospectus.

In addition, Bloomberg's report indicates that if Intel is willing to participate in ARM's IPO, it also implies that the two companies will have broader business cooperation.

After Masayoshi Son appeared, SoftBank's stock price rose by 4% at one point during the day

The founder's return injected a shot of adrenaline into the market. After all, Masayoshi Son's resume is full of stories of turning the tide against the wind. This time, the market seems willing to listen to him talk about AI.

SoftBank's stock price rose by 4% before Masayoshi Son's speech, and then fell slightly, eventually closing up 3.68%. Since the beginning of this year, SoftBank's stock price has risen by 23%.

Some analysts commented that compared with CFO Yoshimitsu Goto, Masayoshi Son is more charismatic. Even when conveying the same information, he sounds more optimistic and focuses on cutting-edge technology, rather than just focusing on the balance sheet like the former.