TOKYO — SoftBank Group Corp. said it would start a second technology megafund and has secured $108 billion in commitments from investors including Apple Inc., Japanese banks, Taiwanese investors and Kazakhstan’s sovereign-wealth fund.
SoftBank
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plans to invest $38 billion of its own capital into the fund, which is a sequel to its nearly $100 billion Vision Fund started in 2017. Besides Apple
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, investors include the National Investment Corp. of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, Foxconn Technology Group
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, Microsoft Corp.
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and Standard Chartered Bank
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. Japanese financial institutions, including the nation’s three top banks, will also participate, SoftBank said.
Since its launch in May 2017, the first Vision Fund has gobbled up large stakes in the world’s most valuable startups and rewritten the rules of venture investment. But the company has struggled to gain the backing of institutional investors for large-scale investments in startups that often take years to reach profitability.
The second Vision Fund plans to invest in artificial intelligence, which SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son has said will benefit from the rising amount of real-world data gathered by sensors, cameras and other machines.
An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.
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