Son started last year under a cloud after the meltdown at WeWork, ands shares plunge with the coronavirus pandemic and a loss of almost $18 billion at SoftBank’s Vision Fund. But the billionaire, raising more than $50 billion by shedding stakes in Alibaba, T-Mobile U.S. Inc. and its domestic wireless affiliate, SoftBank Corp.
The outbreak has had an uneven impact on Son’s startups. WSoftBank took large writedowns on the value of office-sharing giant WeWork and hotel-booking service Oyo Hotels & Homes. At the same time, e-commerce and food-delivery companies have seen their prospects brighten.
India’s Policybazaar about 15% owned by softbank is also considering a listing that may value the online insurance platform at over $3.5 billion. Auto1 Group GmbH 20% owned by softbank is looking to raise €1 billion ($1.2 billion, ¥124 billion) in an offering that would value the German used car retailer at over $6 billion.
SoftBank also owns a stake in ByteDance Ltd., the enormously successful Chinese parent of the video app TikTok. SoftBank invested $2.5 billion at a $75 billion pre-money valuation, according to the person. The Beijing-based company is in talks to raise money at a $180 billion valuation before listing some of its businesses in Hong Kong, Bloomberg News has reported.
Perhaps most significant would be Didi. Son has been the largest investor in ride-hailing companies, pouring over $20 billion into Uber Technologies Inc., Didi, Southeast Asia’s Grab and India’s Ola. Uber went public in 2019, but its rocky debut dampened demand for similar stocks.
Uber shares jumped 71% last year however, suggesting the markets are once again open to such money-losing startups.
Other SoftBank companies that have reportedly begun preparations for IPOs include the U.S. real estate brokerage Compass,
India’s online grocery Grofers
and SenseTime Group Ltd., China’s largest artificial intelligence company.
Several SoftBank-backed companies have already pulled off solid debuts.
Online home-insurance provider Lemonade Inc. quadrupled since its July IPO, oncology drug developer Relay Therapeutics Inc. has surged about 90% since its trading debut.
KE Holdings, a Chinese online property platform, added $5.1 billion in paper gains to Vision Fund’s profit in the quarter ended in September.
previously
========================Nvidia Buys SoftBank’s Arm in Record $40 Billion Chip Deal
By- Acquirer pledges to keep Arm independent to retain customers
- Nvidia to build AI research facility at Arm’s U.K. location
Nvidia Corp. said it agreed to buy SoftBank Group Corp.’s chip division Arm Ltd. for $40 billion, taking control of some of the most widely used electronics technology in the semiconductor industry’s largest-ever deal.
Nvidia will pay $21.5 billion in stock and $12 billion in cash for the U.K.-based chip designer, including a $2 billion payment at signing. SoftBank may receive an additional $5 billion in cash or stock if Arm’s performance meets certain targets, the companies said Sunday in a statement. An additional $1.5 billion will be paid to Arm employees in Nvidia stock.
SoftBank shares surged as much as 10% on news of the deal and renewed talks for the company going private.
Read more: SoftBank Soars After Arm Deal, Renewed Talks to Go Private
The initial payment from Nvidia marks a small premium over the $31.4 billion that SoftBank paid to acquire Arm in 2016, previously the semiconductor industry’s biggest deal. The Japanese company is expected to own less than 10% of Nvidia following the transaction, according to the statement. Regulatory approval may take as long as 18 months before the transaction is completed and the deal needs sign-offs from U.K., China, European Union and U.S. authorities, the companies said. China’s approval may be particularly difficult given rising tensions with the U.S.
“Now Arm will become a U.S. firm, and the conflict over semiconductors between the U.S. and China is becoming fierce as China still controls Arm China,” said Koji Hirai, head of M&A advisory firm Kachitas Corp. in Tokyo.
In comments after the deal announcement, Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said his team “fully expect to spend time with the regulatory bodies in China,” but have every confidence in getting approval for the takeover.
He also addressed concerns the deal will upset Arm’s relationships with customers including Apple Inc. Huang said he will preserve Arm’s neutral business model and wants to expand its client list. He argued Nvidia is spending a lot of money for the acquisition and has no incentive to do anything that would cause clients to walk away. -see comment for more of this article
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rewind to start of softbank 1980s-
To linkin Masa Son alumni start with 3 questions- what would Japan have missed if he hadn't lauched softbank at the start of (1G) 1980S? what would the world have missed if he hadn't invested in jack ma at start of (3G) 2000s, what would humanising AI miss in 5G (2020s) if his partners across hemispheres hadn't set up unique AI funds applied to sharing solutions in the world's premier league of supercities
update Softbank Group has led a $103 million funding of Skylo, a satellite/IoT startup. The deal brought in previous investors that had put $13 million in a Series A deal co-led by DCM and Innovation Endeavors, and joined by Moore Strategic Ventures.
update jan 2020-Softbank wants to help Indonesia build a new, $34 billion capital.
4. Masa Son sees more Vision Funds ahead
| 2021 jan update from www.davosagenda.com | [7:46 AM, 2/7/2021] Chris Macrae: main points americans think ecommerce changed 14% of the economy - ads and retailers; they miss the point that another 14% is logistics -place to place distribution- america has been designing the ai of that for the richest and biggest whereas china has been designing it for everyone | [7:47 AM, 2/7/2021][7:46 AM, 2/7/2021] Chris Macrae: the only 2 places to study unicorns (billion dollar youthful startups) remain usa and china-: although usa has twice as many china - china already has more ai unicorns and young startup ones whose ideas come from needs not just what big tech ceos rule over; in contrast masa son says sadly japan only has one unicorn currently | [7:53 AM, 2/7/2021] Chris Macrae: the interview suggests only good thing of covid is smart ceos wont spend their time travelling the world now they see how to zoom 10 hi level meets a day ; all is really to play for in next 5 years- masa son asks: where will societies ai turn blue collar jobs into silver ones; where will ai change education; which countries will connect the different cables making wind and solar 10 times cheaper and greener; this conversation isnt really happening in the west; it needs to across asia where 70% of humans will determine sustainability; there are bits where i think masa son misdescribes pervasive urgency of fully autonomous delivery however the overall direction of the future is in tune with my father _The Economist's Norman Macrae- japan survey in 1962, his entrepreneur intrapreneur silicon valley surveys to 1982 and his and my 1984 book 2025report.com | .....................................................[8:00 AM, 2/7/2021] Chris Macrae: the video between world's biggest investor fink and masa son is at https://www.weforum.org/events/the-davos-agenda-2021/sessions/an-insight-an-idea-with-masayoshi-son | ||
Softbank chief Masayoshi Son tells Bloomberg Businessweek he plans to raise a fresh $100 billion fund every two to three years and to spend around $50 billion a year.
By way of comparison, the Bloomberg article points out that the entire U.S. venture capital industry invested around $75 billion in 2106, per the National Venture Capital Association.
Other revelations:
Why it matters: Softbank's Vision Fund has already reshaped the tech industry, inspiring other investors to up their aspirations and fueling a wave of ever more cash-hungry startups.
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continuing nvidia article
ReplyDeleteNvidia said the U.K. company will “continue to operate its open-licensing model while maintaining the global customer neutrality that has been foundational to its success.” Nvidia will add its technology to the offerings licensed by Arm, the Santa Clara, California-based company said.
Key Speakers At The Mobile World Congress Americas
Nvidia CEO Jensen HuangPhotographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg
Under Huang, Nvidia has risen rapidly up the ranks of technology companies in market value and influence. Already the dominant force in graphics chips that make video games more realistic, Nvidia has carved out a slice of the market for data center chips and is moving into self-driving vehicles.
Graphics chipmaker market capital eclipses even Intel
Arm’s importance far outweighs its revenue, which comes from licensing chip fundamentals and selling processor designs. Its technology is at the heart of the more than 1 billion smartphones sold annually. Chips that use its code and its layouts are in everything from factory equipment to home electronics.
The acquisition is fueled by the drive to bring artificial intelligence to everything that has an on-switch. Having succeeded in selling Nvidia’s graphics chips to owners of data centers to speed up image recognition and language processing, Huang is looking to make sure his technology helps spread that to everything from self-driving vehicles to smart meters.
“It’s a company with reach that’s just unlike any company in the history of technology,” Huang said in an interview. “We’re uniting Nvidia’s leading AI computing with Arm’s vast ecosystem.”
Cambridge, U.K.-based Arm has carved out a successful niche for itself by being independent. Fierce rivals such as Apple, Samsung Electronics Co., Qualcomm Inc., Broadcom Inc., Intel Corp. and Huawei Technologies Co. are all licensees. They either use Arm’s designs as the basis of their own chips or license its instruction set, the fundamental code used by processors to communicate with software, for proprietary efforts.
The acquisition by Nvidia, also a licensee, is a challenge to that neutrality. SoftBank’s purchase four years ago went ahead largely uncontested because the Japanese company wasn’t a competitor to any of Arm’s customers.
One client that will be directly challenged is Intel. Huang said a priority will be investing in Arm’s efforts to design chips for data-center computing. While he’s carved out a $3 billion niche in the business of supplying Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Facebook Inc. with graphics processors that help with their artificial intelligence workloads, Huang said he wants to speed up the adoption of Arm-based central processors, or CPUs. That’s a lucrative market dominated by Intel, which has about 90% share.
Nvidia announced it will keep Arm’s headquarters in the U.K. and will invest in a new facility there to push forward AI research, educate customers and provide a place for experimentation in robotics and automation. Huang said that commitment demonstrates how the acquisition will add to the U.K.’s technology footprint rather than detracting from it.
SoftBank’s sale of Arm unwinds another strategic investment in favor of boosting liquidity and enabling founder Masayoshi Son to focus on the more tactical investing he has said he wants to pursue.
Nvidia Now a Data Center Chip Company
Revenue from servers surpasses gaming for first time
Source: Company
nvidia continued
ReplyDeleteNvidia’s Huang runs a company that’s captured the attention of investors like few others in the past decade. Like Son, he’s a charismatic leader espousing a long-term vision of where technology is headed. The Taiwan-born entrepreneur is more engineering-focused than his Japanese counterpart, though, and often publically delves into the minutiae of semiconductor and computer science.
His latest successful recasting of Nvidia’s technology involves the processing of AI work done in data centers. The company’s chips are among the best at breaking up the manipulation of data into small pieces and then executing that in parallel at high speed.
Huang will also get a large footprint in the mobile industry and smartphones. A previous attempt by Nvidia to break Qualcomm’s dominance of that business failed. The biggest rival to Qualcomm in smartphone processors is Apple’s internal effort. Those two companies are among Arm’s biggest customers.
Even without a presence in mobile, Nvidia’s value has soared in the past decade. The stock, which ended 2010 at $15.42 a share, closed Friday at $486.58. That’s given it a market value of just over $300 billion, almost $100 billion more than Intel, the world’s largest chipmaker with seven times the revenue of Nvidia.
— With assistance by Takahiko Hyuga