The dizzy pace of the acquisitions is in line with CEO Masayoshi Son’s history of bold, speculative expansion.
August 14, 2017
‘It’s been hard to miss the flurry of aggressive moves by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank of late. On May 23, the company bought a $4 billion stake in U.S. chipmaker Nvidia. On June 8, it paid an undisclosed amount for robotics company Boston Dynamics, buying it from Google parent Alphabet. On Aug 9, it pumped $1.1 billion into pharmaceutical firm Roivant, which Wired called perhaps the biggest single biotech investment ever. And reports in recent days have indicated SoftBank is nearing a $1 billion investment in Fanatics, an online retailer of licensed sports apparel whose investors and partners include MLB and the NFL.
Many of the investments have been made via the $93 billion SoftBank Vision Fund — the world’s largest tech fund — which has raised money this year from such investors as Apple, Sharp, Qualcomm, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, Abu Dhabi, the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and the company’s own money.’