SoftBank raises US$1.86 billion overseas as it boosts AI bets

SOFTBANK Group raised about US$1.86 billion via US dollar and euro bond sales in its first foreign currency debt deal since 2021, as the Japanese tech firm moves to jump-start investment in artificial intelligence (AI).

Billionaire Masayoshi Son’s company said it priced two US dollar tranches on Thursday (Jun 27) totalling US$900 million and two euro tranches raising 900 million euros (S$1.3 billion). SoftBank said the funds will be used to retire debt and fund operations.

SoftBank and its founder Son have made major AI investments recently that underscore expectations they will quicken their pace of activity in that area. The Japanese firm this year directly invested US$200 million into Tempus AI, a startup that analyses medical data for doctors and patients to come up with better treatments. More recently, it backed Perplexity AI at a US$3 billion valuation, betting on a firm that aims to use AI to compete with Alphabet’s Google search.

Longer term, SoftBank’s working on a plan to deploy some US$100 billion into AI-related chips in a project dubbed Izanagi, Bloomberg News reported in February. BLOOMBERG