TOKYO (WS News) – SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son reiterated his belief in the coming of artificial superintelligence (ASI) on Tuesday, saying it would require hundreds of billions of dollars of investment to realise.
Artificial superintelligence will be 10,000 times smarter than a human brain and will exist by 2035, Son told an audience of global business, technology, and finance leaders at a conference in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Son said he is saving up funds “so I can make the next big move,” but did not provide any details as to his investment plans.
He predicted that generative AI would require $900 trillion dollars in cumulative capital expenditure in data centres and chips in the future, adding that he thought chip maker Nvidia was undervalued on this basis.
Son has long touted the promise of new technologies and made his name and fortune on successful bets on the proliferation of mobile internet and e-commerce.
However, his record as an investor is patchy. The launch of SoftBank’s mammoth Vision Fund investment vehicles in 2017 upended the world of venture capital but many of the funds’ high-growth startups have crashed in value.
The funds were down $2.4 billion in aggregate as of the end of June 2024.
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund PIF invested $45 billion into the first Vision Fund.
