SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son has held discussions in recent weeks with senior figures in the Gulf, including in the United Arab Emirates, about raising up to $100 billion for a new wave of artificial intelligence investments, the Financial Times reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. The capital would seed a fund that buys companies and then improves their operations using AI and other advanced technologies, rather than simply backing AI model developers.
The move is Son’s most ambitious fundraising attempt since the first Vision Fund in 2017, which also drew heavily on Gulf sovereign money, including from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala. The structure would mark a shift from SoftBank’s recent habit of funding its AI bets from its own balance sheet: the company said last week it had completed the final tranche of its $30 billion follow-on investment in OpenAI, and it raised $11.1 billion last month in what was described as the largest high-yield corporate bond sale ever.
The context matters. OpenAI has delayed its planned IPO, and Reuters noted SoftBank shares fell as much as 7.3 percent in Tokyo on Friday on concerns about OpenAI’s revenue growth. If the Gulf money comes through, SoftBank can keep buying at private-equity-fund scale without leaning further on expensive debt; if it does not, the pace of its AI expansion stays tied to bond-market conditions. Either way, the raise attempt signals that the next phase of the AI capital cycle is buyout-sized: acquiring traditional businesses and rebuilding them with AI, not just financing the data centers and models.
A SoftBank representative declined to comment, and Reuters said it could not independently verify the report. The talks are early and the commitments have not materialized, so the $100 billion figure is an ambition, not a closed amount. Track whether named Gulf institutions, such as Mubadala or Saudi Arabia’s PIF, sign on.