Reports suggest that Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, may have competition in his ambition to take on NVIDIA in the development and production of AI computation accelerant chips. According to Bloomberg, Masayoshi Son, founder of SoftBank, plans on raising up to $100 billion for his foray into this domain.
Monetary Allocation
The Bloomberg report revealed that SoftBank may allocate up to $30 billion from its available assets, given the corporation presently holds approximately $41 billion in reserves. Son aims to raise the remaining $70 billion from Middle Eastern investors.
Project Izanagi
Son intends to establish a new AI chip developer with SoftBank’s subsidiary company, Arm. This new project, codenamed Izanagi after the Japanese god of life creation, will focus on producing chips with a namesake architecture for AI systems.
Strong AI Advocacy
Over the past few years, Son has been advocating for strong artificial intelligence investment during his speeches. He believes a world populated with such machines will be safer and happier. Despite engaging in discussions with Altman about potentially collaborating on the latter’s initiative, sources affirm that the Izanagi project will proceed independently. Son is currently in talks with Arm’s management, who are expected to spearhead the computational accelerator’s development under the Izanagi initiative.
SoftBank Stock Movement
Following these revelations, SoftBank shares saw a 3.2% price increase in Monday morning trading.
This post was last modified on 02/22/2024