SoftBank cuts 20% of Vision Fund team in AI investment pivot

SoftBank Group’s Vision Fund will cut nearly a fifth of its global workforce as founder Masayoshi Son shifts the investment giant’s focus from a wide venture capital portfolio to bold bets in artificial intelligence.

The Japanese conglomerate confirmed the cuts in a statement, following reports by Reuters that around 20% of the Vision Fund’s 300-strong team will be laid off worldwide. It marks the third round of reductions since 2022 but the first to coincide with a return to profit at the flagship fund.

The Vision Fund, which had been battered by heavy losses in recent years, reported its strongest quarterly performance since mid-2021 last month, buoyed by gains in holdings such as Nvidia and South Korea’s Coupang. Despite that rebound, Son is pushing ahead with a restructuring that will streamline operations and redeploy resources toward large-scale AI initiatives.

A spokesperson for the Vision Fund said the group was “continually adjusting the organisation to best execute our long-term strategy — making bold, high-conviction investments in AI and breakthrough technologies, and creating long-term value for our stakeholders.”

Shift to capital-intensive bets

Unlike earlier years, when Vision Fund spread capital across hundreds of start-ups, the latest restructuring underscores Son’s return to the high-risk, high-reward model that first made him a global investor to watch. At the heart of this pivot is the proposed $500 billion “Stargate” project, an ambitious plan to build a vast network of U.S. data centres in partnership with OpenAI, Reuters reported.

The move also dovetails with SoftBank’s broader push into capital-heavy AI infrastructure. Over the past year, Vision Fund 2 has invested $9.7 billion in OpenAI. The company has also sought to strengthen its hardware ecosystem through acquisitions of chipmakers Graphcore and Ampere Computing, as well as investments in Arm, Nvidia and Intel.

The overhaul comes as SoftBank distances itself from the venture model that defined the last era of the Vision Fund. That approach left the company nursing multibillion-dollar losses, particularly on WeWork, which was once among its most prominent bets.

Since then, Son has worked to repair credibility by selling assets, shoring up balance sheets and narrowing the scope of Vision Fund’s investments. Now, he is betting that artificial intelligence — both in chips and foundation models — will deliver the scale and returns to restore SoftBank’s position as a leading technology investor.