SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son is a fan of ChatGPT—and thinks the revived focus on generative A.I. will help the troubled Japanese tech company “rule the world.”
The tech investor called himself a “heavy user” of OpenAI’s chatbot in comments to shareholders of SoftBank Corp.—SoftBank's telecoms subsidiary—on Tuesday. The parent company will have its annual meeting on Wednesday.
“I am chatting with ChatGPT every day,” Son said, according to Reuters. The tech investor also said that he speaks with OpenAI founder Sam Altman “almost every day.”
Son’s appearance on Tuesday is the CEO’s first public appearance in seven months. He awkwardly bailed on the company’s earnings call earlier this year, saying he would rather focus on the upcoming public listing of semiconductor designer Arm.
Son's absence came at a turbulent time for the business—SoftBank Group’s Vision Funds, the company’s flagship venture funds, lost money for five straight quarters between January 2022 and the end of March 2023.
The fund lost $32 billion in the last fiscal year, thanks to declines in its investments in firms like Chinese A.I. firm SenseTime and Indonesian ride-hailing company GoTo.
SoftBank is also still grappling with its investment in co-working space provider WeWork. The company lent WeWork billions of dollars to keep it afloat during the COVID pandemic.
Yet WeWork is still falling short of profit expectations, and now faces a flood of cheap offices thanks to the shift to remote work. WeWork’s CEO quit unexpectedly earlier this year, reportedly due to frustrations with SoftBank and Son, and their refusal to pay more attention to the real estate firm.
SoftBank halted almost all of its startup investments last year, with Yoshimitsu Goto, the company’s chief financial officer, describing the company as being in “total defense.”
Still, Son now thinks the company has turned a corner, saying Tuesday that SoftBank “will be ever more fierce,” according to Bloomberg.
SoftBank is preparing for a public listing of Arm as interest in chip firms explode thanks to the rise of generative A.I.
Arm dominates the mobile chip market, with almost every smartphone chip using its architecture. SoftBank is reportedly valuing Arm at $10 billion ahead of an IPO later this year, and is courting big companies like Intel as anchor investors.
“I’ve made many, many mistakes in my A.I. investments, some of them embarrassing,” Son said on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg. “But among the many failures, there are a number of buds that will blossom very soon.”
“We will rule the world in the end,” he said.
