SoftBank

SoftBank Group is a Japanese multinational conglomerate founded in 1981 by Masayoshi Son, operating as one of the world's largest technology investment companies. Through its Vision Fund (the largest technology-focused venture fund ever created, at over $100 billion) and direct investments, SoftBank has backed some of the most important companies in AI and technology.

SoftBank's AI footprint spans investment and infrastructure. The company made a landmark $30 billion investment in OpenAI in 2026, and its Vision Fund portfolio includes major AI-adjacent companies including ARM (whose chip designs power most mobile AI inference globally), ByteDance, and dozens of AI startups. SoftBank is also a partner in the Stargate UAE project with OpenAI, Oracle, NVIDIA, and G42.

SoftBank's most strategically important AI asset is its majority ownership of ARM Holdings, the chip architecture company whose designs are in virtually every smartphone and an increasing number of AI edge devices. ARM's energy-efficient chip designs are critical for on-device AI inference, and the company's Neoverse server CPUs are gaining traction in data centers. Masayoshi Son has called AI the most important revolution in human history and has reoriented SoftBank's entire strategy around AI investment and infrastructure.

SoftBank has also moved from financing AI into building the physical plant for it. Its energy subsidiary SB Energy is developing a 10-gigawatt data center campus in Piketon, Ohio, on the site of a former uranium enrichment plant — the largest such project announced to date, with a first phase of roughly 800 megawatts targeted for 2028. OpenAI is the prospective anchor tenant, and the scale of the build has made its financing structure a live question across the industry.