SoftBank, led by Masayoshi Son, is in preliminary talks with Gulf investors to raise up to $100 billion for a new artificial intelligence fund. This fund would target established companies rather than AI startups, retrofitting them with AI and robotics through SoftBank’s own unit Roze. The Japanese conglomerate has already invested approximately $64.6 to $65 billion in OpenAI, representing roughly 13% ownership, partly funded by a record $11.1 billion high-yield bond sale in September 2026. This strategy marks a notable shift from the 2017 Vision Fund, which focused mainly on startups, and signals a transition from funding frontier AI developers to deploying AI across the broader economy.
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