SoftBank CEO Son Targets Artificial Super Intelligence Leadership

SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son announced a bold vision to establish the company as the leading platform provider in artificial super intelligence (ASI) within the next decade, aiming to rival tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google. Son described ASI as AI that could outperform human intelligence by a factor of 10,000, emphasizing a "winner-takes-all" market dynamic. To achieve this, SoftBank has made significant investments including acquiring U.S. chip designer Ampere for $6.5 billion and committing up to $40 billion to OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, with total agreed investments in OpenAI now at $32 billion. Son expressed confidence in OpenAI's potential and expects it to eventually go public, while also acknowledging past investment regrets such as missing earlier opportunities with OpenAI and Nvidia. This renewed investment strategy follows SoftBank's history of both major successes, like Alibaba, and notable failures, such as WeWork. Overall, SoftBank aims to organize and dominate the emerging ASI industry through aggressive and strategic investments.