SoftBank Vision Fund
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The SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF) is a series of large technology-focused investment vehicles managed by SB Investment Advisers (UK) Limited, a subsidiary of SoftBank Group Corp. of Japan. The first Vision Fund (SVF1) held its initial close in May 2017 with approximately $93 billion in committed capital, climbing to roughly $98.6 billion. At launch it was the largest privately raised technology investment fund in history, dwarfing every prior venture capital and growth equity vehicle by an order of magnitude.[1][2] A successor, Vision Fund 2 (SVF2), was announced in July 2019 with a $108 billion target, but external commitments did not materialize, and SoftBank ultimately funded almost all of SVF2 from its own balance sheet.[3][4]
The Vision Fund family is the principal platform through which Masayoshi Son has pursued his "AI revolution" thesis: that a new generation of artificial intelligence-enabled companies will reshape mobility, finance, e-commerce, healthcare, robotics, and consumer software, and that capturing those returns requires checks larger than any traditional venture capital firm could bear. The approach is characterized by outsized check sizes (typically $100 million to over $1 billion per investment), a preference for late-stage growth rounds, willingness to back multiple competitors in the same vertical, and the assumption that a few outsized winners will compensate for many losses.[5][6]
The fund's track record runs the spectrum from spectacular success (Coupang, DoorDash, Slack) to spectacular failure (WeWork, Wirecard, Greensill Capital, Katerra, FTX). After a difficult 2022 to 2023 period in which it booked losses on the order of $50 billion across two fiscal years, the platform was substantially repositioned around generative AI from late 2024. Through SVF2, SoftBank committed roughly $40 billion to OpenAI over 2025 and helped anchor the Stargate AI infrastructure joint venture announced in January 2025.[7][8][9]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Type | Series of private investment funds |
| Manager | SB Investment Advisers (UK) Limited |
| Parent | SoftBank Group Corp. (TSE: 9984) |
| Headquarters | London, United Kingdom |
| Founded | May 20, 2017 (SVF1 first close) |
| Founder | Masayoshi Son |
| Founding CEO | Rajeev Misra (2017 to 2022) |
| Current CEO | Alex Clavel (sole CEO since November 2024) |
| Funds under family | SVF1, SVF2, SoftBank Latin America Fund I and II |
| Combined committed capital | ~$160B+ across SVF1 and SVF2 |
| Portfolio companies | 470+ cumulative across SVF1 and SVF2 |
| Website | visionfund.com |
The Vision Fund was conceived in 2016, in the months following SoftBank Group's $32 billion acquisition of British semiconductor IP company Arm Holdings.[10] In October 2016 SoftBank and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund (PIF) signed a memorandum of understanding to create a $100 billion vehicle codenamed "Project Crystal Ball."[11] PIF agreed to commit up to $45 billion over five years on the condition that SoftBank itself committed at least $25 billion. Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company joined a few months later with a $15 billion commitment.[12][13]
On May 20, 2017 SoftBank announced the first close of the Vision Fund with $93 billion in committed capital: $28 billion from SoftBank Group, $45 billion from Saudi PIF, and $15 billion from Mubadala, plus smaller commitments from Apple, Foxconn, Qualcomm, Sharp, and Larry Ellison's family office.[1][14] Subsequent closings brought the final committed capital to roughly $98.6 billion, more capital than the entire United States venture capital industry raised in 2016.[15]
The fund's manager, SB Investment Advisers (UK) Limited, was registered in London and led by Rajeev Misra, a former Deutsche Bank credit trader who had worked closely with Son since 2014. Misra recruited senior bankers and investors from Deutsche Bank, UBS, Goldman Sachs, and existing SoftBank staff. The Vision Fund opened offices in London, Tokyo, Silicon Valley, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Riyadh, and Abu Dhabi.[16][17]
Vision Fund 1 had an unusual hybrid capital structure designed to attract sovereign LPs nervous about long-duration tech exposure. Roughly $40 billion of the $93 billion raised was structured as preferred equity rather than common equity, paying a 7 percent annual coupon to the LP regardless of fund performance, with upside capped at principal plus the fixed coupon. The remainder was common equity that would absorb both upside and downside in the portfolio.[18][19] In practice PIF and Mubadala sat largely in preferred units while SoftBank Group anchored the common units, taking disproportionate downside exposure in exchange for a larger share of upside. The fund had a 12-year stated term with a 5-year investment period from final close, plus a 2 percent management fee and 20 percent carried interest above a hurdle rate scaled to the fund's size.[20]
The table below summarizes principal disclosed commitments to Vision Fund 1.
| Limited partner | Commitment (US$) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund | $45 billion | Largest LP; bulk in preferred units |
| SoftBank Group | $28 billion | Common equity anchor |
| Mubadala Investment Company (Abu Dhabi) | $15 billion | Sovereign LP, preferred units |
| Apple | ~$1 billion | Strategic LP |
| Foxconn Technology Group | ~$0.5 billion | Strategic LP |
| Qualcomm | Undisclosed (small) | Strategic LP |
| Sharp | Undisclosed (small) | Strategic LP |
| Larry Ellison family office | Undisclosed | Reported direct commitment |
| Total committed | ~$98.6 billion | First close $93B (May 2017) |
Vision Fund 2 was structured very differently. Initial 2019 disclosures referenced memoranda of understanding totaling roughly $108 billion from prospective LPs including Apple, Foxconn, Microsoft, Mizuho, MUFG, and Sumitomo Mitsui.[3] Most of these MOUs were never converted into binding commitments. After WeWork's failed September 2019 IPO, the fund's existing performance issues, and the broader market environment, sovereign LPs and prospective external LPs largely declined to participate. SoftBank Group ultimately funded SVF2 essentially in full from its own balance sheet, with a final committed size on the order of $56 billion.[4][21]
Son's stated thesis for the Vision Fund is that the world is in the early stages of a multi-decade artificial intelligence transition, leading toward what he describes as the "singularity" or "artificial superintelligence." Son has argued in investor presentations that AI will reshape every major industry within 30 years, and that capturing the resulting returns requires building positions now in companies that can reach global scale.[22][23]
Several structural choices follow from this thesis. Vision Fund typically writes checks of $100 million to over $1 billion at Series C, Series D, or pre-IPO stages. It has often invested in multiple competitors in the same vertical (for example, ride-hailing exposure across Uber, Didi Chuxing, Grab, Ola, and 99 Taxi), on the implicit theory that the fund benefits whether the players merge, one wins, or all reach scale. The fund explicitly targeted a portfolio in which a few mega-winners would cover an expected high failure rate among the rest. Portfolio companies have at times been pushed toward aggressive growth, M&A, or geographic expansion as a condition of further investment. Sectoral breadth has spanned mobility, e-commerce, fintech, healthcare and life sciences, robotics, real estate technology, food delivery, edtech, and enterprise software, with the common thread of "AI-enabled" or "data-rich" business models.[6][24]
Critics have characterized the approach as "spray and pray" or as inflating valuations by pushing more capital into rounds than would otherwise be raised, distorting later-stage venture pricing for the wider ecosystem.[25]
The portfolio across SVF1 and SVF2 has included more than 470 companies cumulatively. The table below lists some of the most material positions by capital invested or by influence on fund returns. "Realized" means SoftBank or the fund has substantially monetized the position; "public" means the company has IPO'd but the fund retains shares; "private" means the position remained in the portfolio at the time of writing.
| Company | Sector | Approx. invested | Status / outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uber | Ride-hailing | ~$7.7 billion | Realized; pre-IPO investment, sold post-2019 IPO |
| WeWork | Real estate / co-working | ~$10 billion (parent + fund) | Catastrophic loss; Chapter 11 in November 2023 |
| DoorDash | Food delivery | ~$680 million | Realized; massive gain at December 2020 IPO |
| Coupang | E-commerce (South Korea) | ~$3 billion | Realized; March 2021 NYSE IPO at ~$60B valuation |
| Slack | Enterprise messaging | ~$335 million | Realized; acquired by Salesforce in 2021 |
| ByteDance (TikTok parent) | Consumer internet | ~$3 billion | Private; 2018 secondary investment |
| Didi Chuxing | Ride-hailing (China) | ~$12 billion (group + fund) | Public; impacted by 2021 to 2022 China crackdown |
| Grab | Super app (Southeast Asia) | ~$3 billion | Public via SPAC December 2021 |
| Ola | Ride-hailing (India) | Several hundred million | Private; multiple businesses spun off |
| OYO Hotels | Hospitality | ~$3 billion | Private; multiple writedowns |
| Cruise | Autonomous vehicles | ~$2.25 billion | Realized; GM bought back stake |
| Nuro | Autonomous delivery | $940 million | Private |
| Klarna | Buy now, pay later | Several rounds | Public 2025 |
| Compass | Real estate technology | ~$1.5 billion | Public via NYSE IPO 2021 |
| Roivant Sciences | Biotechnology platform | ~$1.1 billion | Public via SPAC 2021 |
| 10x Genomics | Life sciences instruments | Undisclosed | Public 2019 |
| Wag Labs | Dog walking app | $300 million | Realized at heavy loss |
| Brain Corp | Robotics software | ~$114 million | Private |
| Plenty Unlimited | Vertical farming | Several rounds | Private |
| Plus.ai | Autonomous trucking | Several rounds | Private |
| Symbotic | Warehouse robotics | Via SVF Investment Corp 3 SPAC | Public on Nasdaq June 2022 |
| Wirecard | German payments | ~$1 billion convertible | Catastrophic loss; June 2020 insolvency |
| Greensill Capital | Supply-chain finance | ~$1.5 billion equity plus fund deposits | Catastrophic loss; March 2021 collapse |
| Katerra | Construction technology | ~$2 billion | Catastrophic loss; June 2021 bankruptcy |
| Magic Leap | Augmented reality | Several rounds via Vision Fund affiliate | Private; substantial writedowns |
| Fanatics | Sports merchandise | Multiple rounds | Private |
| FTX | Cryptocurrency exchange | ~$100 million | Total loss; November 2022 collapse |
| OpenAI | AI foundation models | ~$40B committed via SVF2 (2025); +$30B (Feb 2026) | Private |
| Skild AI | Robotics foundation models | Reported lead investor | Private |
The portfolio has also included fintech exposure (PolicyBazaar, Revolut, Chime, Better.com, C2FO), Latin American positions through the Latin America Fund (Rappi, Kavak, Quinto Andar, Gympass), Indian consumer internet companies (Lenskart, Unacademy, FirstCry), and a range of biotech and edtech investments.[24][26][27]
Several well-known SoftBank-associated assets are held at the parent group level rather than in Vision Fund vehicles. Arm Holdings was acquired in 2016 by SoftBank Group; a 25 percent stake was transferred into the Vision Fund in 2017 and bought back by the parent in August 2023 ahead of the Arm IPO. Boston Dynamics was acquired by SoftBank Group from Google in 2017 and sold to Hyundai Motor Group in December 2020. SoftBank Robotics, maker of Pepper and NAO humanoid robots, has been held at the parent level.[28][29]
Returns at the fund and at the parent SoftBank Group level have moved together since 2017, with mark-to-market revaluations of the Vision Fund portfolio dominating SoftBank's reported quarterly results. The narrative arc breaks roughly into five phases.
From first close in May 2017 through 2019, SVF1 deployed roughly $70 billion across 80 companies in 24 months. Major commitments included Uber (a $7.7 billion package combining direct fund investment and a tender offer), WeWork (multiple rounds), DoorDash, Coupang, Didi, Grab, OYO, Slack, ByteDance, and Plenty.[30] In early 2019 SoftBank disclosed that it had acquired and then exited a position in Nvidia of roughly $4 billion using a collar structure, realizing a reported $3.3 billion gain. By late 2024 the same shares would have been worth over $150 billion, a missed gain Son has publicly cited as a major regret.[31][32]
In September 2019 WeWork pulled its planned IPO after scrutiny of governance and financials revealed losses far larger than disclosed. Private valuation collapsed from roughly $47 billion to roughly $8 billion within weeks. SoftBank took control with a $5 billion rescue package in October 2019 and ousted founder Adam Neumann.[33][34] In November 2019 SoftBank reported its first quarterly loss in 14 years, including roughly $9.2 billion in WeWork-related charges across the parent and Vision Fund.[35] In April 2020 SoftBank guided to roughly $24 billion in fiscal year losses across the Vision Fund, WeWork, and OneWeb.[36]
The pandemic accelerated demand for several portfolio companies. DoorDash IPO'd at a $68 billion valuation in December 2020, generating a reported paper gain of roughly $11 billion. Coupang followed in March 2021 at a roughly $60 billion NYSE listing. Slack's June 2020 acquisition by Salesforce closed in 2021. In May 2021 SoftBank reported a record annual net profit of roughly 5 trillion yen and a Vision Fund segment fair value of roughly $154 billion across SVF1 and SVF2 combined.[37][38]
The 2022 tech valuation reset, the Chinese platform crackdown that compressed Didi and other Chinese holdings, and the November 2022 collapse of FTX (in which the Vision Fund had a roughly $100 million position written to zero) produced consecutive years of severe losses. SoftBank reported a Vision Fund segment loss of roughly 3.5 trillion yen ($25.7 billion) for fiscal year 2022, and a further loss of roughly 4.3 trillion yen (around $32 billion) for fiscal year 2023, a Japanese postwar record for a non-financial company.[39][40] Wirecard (June 2020 insolvency, ~$1B), Greensill Capital (March 2021 collapse, ~$3B), Katerra (June 2021 bankruptcy, ~$2B), and Zymergen (delisted 2022) all failed in or before this period.[41]
In August 2023 SoftBank Group bought back the Vision Fund's 25 percent stake in Arm at a roughly $64 billion valuation, transferring roughly $16 billion of cash from parent to fund. On September 14, 2023 Arm Holdings priced its IPO on Nasdaq at $51 per share, raising $4.87 billion at a $54 billion fully diluted valuation. Arm shares appreciated substantially through 2024 and 2025, becoming the dominant driver of SoftBank Group net asset value.[42][43] The Vision Fund segment returned to profit in fiscal year 2024 (ended March 2024), and fiscal 2025 reporting reflected large gains driven by OpenAI and broader AI revaluations.[44] In the September quarter of fiscal 2025 SoftBank reported a Vision Fund segment gain of roughly $19 billion driven principally by OpenAI mark-ups; by February 2026 SoftBank disclosed an additional $4.2 billion gain on OpenAI in a single quarter.[45][46]
Masayoshi Son, founder and chairman of SoftBank Group, has personally chaired the Vision Fund investment committee since inception. Day-to-day leadership has changed several times. Rajeev Misra served as founding CEO of SB Investment Advisers from 2017 until July 2022, when he stepped back to launch his own roughly $6 billion fund, One Investment Management, backed by Mubadala, ADQ, and Royal Group. He formally departed his SoftBank corporate officer role on August 31, 2022, and stepped down as co-CEO of SVF2 in November 2024.[47][48][49] Alex Clavel, who had been co-CEO of SVF2 alongside Misra, became sole CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisers from November 2024. Other senior leadership has included Akshay Naheta (Special Situations team), Munish Varma (Asia partner), and Marcelo Claure (briefly chair of the Latin America Fund and former COO of SoftBank Group, departed 2022).[50][51] A 2018 to 2022 internal-conflict episode involved Wall Street Journal allegations that senior Vision Fund figures had engaged in dirty-tricks campaigns against internal critics; Misra denied wrongdoing, and several senior executives departed in subsequent years.[52]
In March 2019 SoftBank Group announced the SoftBank Innovation Fund, a $5 billion technology growth fund for Latin America led by Marcelo Claure. The fund targeted e-commerce, digital financial services, healthcare, mobility, and insurance across Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico, with SoftBank initially committing $2 billion of its own capital.[53] In September 2021 SoftBank launched a SoftBank Latin America Fund II with an initial $3 billion commitment, bringing total regional committed capital to $8 billion. Notable Latin American portfolio companies include Rappi, Kavak, Quinto Andar, Gympass, Loft, Madeira Madeira, Mercado Bitcoin, and Creditas.[54][55] From 2024 industry coverage referenced an "AI-pivoted" Vision Fund 3 structured around direct co-investments in AI infrastructure and large model companies, although SoftBank has not formally branded a Vision Fund 3 vehicle. The February 2025 Cristal Intelligence joint venture between SoftBank and OpenAI, a $3 billion enterprise AI vehicle to deploy OpenAI agents across the SoftBank portfolio, has been described in coverage as part of this evolution.[56][57]
From late 2024 SoftBank's activity through SVF2 pivoted aggressively toward OpenAI. SoftBank invested roughly $2.2 billion in OpenAI between September 2024 and the start of 2025 through secondary tender offers and primary participation. On March 31, 2025 SoftBank announced a definitive agreement to make follow-on investments of up to $40 billion in OpenAI, structured in two tranches and contingent on OpenAI's corporate restructuring. The first tranche of $7.5 billion closed in April 2025; a $22.5 billion tranche closed on December 26, 2025; SoftBank syndicated roughly $11 billion to co-investors. By December 30, 2025 SoftBank confirmed completion of the full $40 billion commitment, taking aggregate ownership in OpenAI to roughly 11 percent.[7][58][59] In February 2026 SoftBank announced an additional $30 billion follow-on through SVF2, bringing cumulative committed exposure to roughly $64.6 billion and reported ownership to roughly 13 percent.[8][60]
On January 21, 2025 SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX announced the Stargate project, a US AI infrastructure joint venture with a stated $500 billion commitment over four years and an initial $100 billion deployment. The announcement was made at the White House by President Donald Trump on his second day in office, with Son, Sam Altman, and Larry Ellison present. Son was named chairman of the venture. SoftBank and OpenAI each held 40 percent of the venture and committed $19 billion each in initial funding; Oracle and MGX each held 7 percent at $7 billion. Initial sites included a multi-gigawatt buildout in Abilene, Texas, with five additional US sites announced in September 2025.[9][61][62]
The most common substantive critique of the Vision Fund is that it concentrated capital in money-losing, growth-at-all-costs late-stage companies, inflating valuations across the broader venture industry and accelerating the pre-IPO bubble of 2017 to 2021. The collapses of WeWork, Wirecard, Greensill, Katerra, FTX, and the Chinese platform writedowns have been cited as evidence that the fund's diligence and governance processes were inadequate to its scale.[25][63] Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal reporting through 2019 to 2022 described portfolio companies being pressured to accept more capital than they wanted, governance arrangements that gave Vision Fund companies disproportionate influence on early-stage venture pricing, and a willingness to back competing companies in the same vertical that produced internal conflicts of interest.[64]
The fund's exposure to Saudi capital became politically controversial after the October 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Because PIF, controlled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was the largest LP, SoftBank faced significant pressure to distance itself. In November 2018 Son condemned the killing in press conferences while reaffirming SoftBank's commitment to its Saudi investors and stating that the fund would not return PIF capital. SoftBank's share price fell roughly 15 percent between Khashoggi's disappearance on October 2 and Son's public statement.[65][66]
The Vision Fund's preferred-equity structure, with PIF and Mubadala holding fixed-coupon preferred units while SoftBank Group sat in common equity, has also drawn scrutiny. The arrangement guaranteed sovereign LPs a return regardless of fund performance, but it placed disproportionate downside on SoftBank Group's balance sheet, and has been described in commentary as similar to a leveraged equity bet by Son personally.[18][19]
The $98.6 billion of SVF1 capital, deployed at speed across mobility, fintech, e-commerce, and consumer internet, redrew the late-stage venture market between 2017 and 2020. Single rounds of $1 billion or more, formerly rare, became routine. The fund's footprint accelerated the IPO timelines of multiple platforms, helped consolidate ride-hailing globally, and seeded the Latin American venture ecosystem at scale. Several of the fund's largest losses (WeWork, FTX, Wirecard, Greensill, Katerra) have become standard business-school case studies on governance, due diligence, and the limits of capital deployment as a competitive strategy.[67][68]
From 2024 onward the Vision Fund's narrative reset around generative AI. SoftBank's roughly $40 billion commitment to OpenAI through SVF2, the additional $30 billion announced in February 2026, and the Stargate joint venture made the Vision Fund the dominant private financier of the US AI build-out and gave Masayoshi Son a central role in the politics and economics of AI infrastructure. Whether the OpenAI position vindicates the original "AI revolution" thesis, or repeats the WeWork concentration risk on a larger scale, remains the open question of the fund's second decade.[69][70]
SoftBank Group, Masayoshi Son, Rajeev Misra, Arm Holdings, OpenAI, Stargate Initiative, MGX, Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund, Mubadala, WeWork, Coupang, DoorDash, Uber, ByteDance, SoftBank Robotics, AI infrastructure, venture capital.