SoftBank to IPO ‘VisionFund’
May 7, 2019
By Chris Forrester
Japan’s giant SoftBank conglomerate is contemplating an IPO for a portion of its $100 billion Vision Fund according to Reuters.
The fund was launched in 2017 by Masayoshi Son with – mostly – Saudi Arabian cash and in the process created the world’s largest private technology-based equity fund. Other funding comes from Qualcomm, Apple, Foxconn, Larry Ellison and others including the Mubadala organisation from the UAE.
The SoftBank Vision Fund is reportedly invested in UK-based chipset business ARM Holdings ($8.2 billion), NVIDIA ($5 billion), Uber ($9.3 billion) and dozens of other mostly technology/health-related start-ups.
At one stage a SoftBank investment of $1.2 billion was made into satellite business OneWeb and with OneWeb making a bid for Intelsat which failed. The OneWeb investment has seemingly not been placed into the company’s Vision Fund. SoftBank itself is also an investor in Google’s Project Loon having placed $125 million into the balloon-based broadband concept.