Japanese mobile carrier Softbank Corp yesterday said it hoped to raise as much as US$100 billion for a new technology investment fund it has set up in partnership with Saudi Arabia.
The company said it would invest about US$25 billion in the Softbank Vision Fund over the next five years, while the Saudi public investment fund would “consider investing in the fund and becoming the lead investment partner.”
The Saudi contribution could reach US$45 billion, Softbank said of the non-binding agreement.
Softbank also said that unidentified “large global investors” might also join the fund, which is designed to invest in promising technology firms.
“The overall potential size of the fund can go up to [US]$100 billion,” it said in statement.
Softbank’s Tokyo-listed shares soared 3.3 percent yesterday.
“Softbank has a proven track record of investment successes. They are looking for another Alibaba [Group Holding Ltd, 阿里巴巴],” Ace Research Institute analyst Hideki Yasuda told Bloomberg News.
Flamboyant Softbank founder Masayoshi Son has led the firm on a string of acquisitions big and small, with many showing themselves to be ahead of their time, including the firm’s early investment in Alibaba.
It reaped huge profits from a partial sale of its stake in Alibaba, while in June it sold Finnish gamemaker Supercell Oy, creator of Clash of Clans, to Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊) for US$8.6 billion.
Its US mobile unit Sprint Corp is still unprofitable and some analysts have questioned Softbank’s most recent high-profile deal — a US$32 billion purchases of British iPhone chip designer ARM Holdings Ltd.
There have been growing concerns about its balance sheet with Softbank carrying more than US$100 billion in debt, largely tied to its frenzied string of acquisitions.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the