SoftBank Vision Fund to say 20% of employees in the move to daring AI bets, source and memo, says

* Vision Fund shifts focus to support AI ambitions from founder Masayoshi Son * Son’s strategy returns to high-risk investments with a high reward * Softbank’s AI betting includes $ 9.7 billion in Openai by Krystal Hu 18 September (Reuters) SOFTBank Group will be almost 20% of its visual funds in the founder Masayoshi Large-scale crafts of the shifts in founder Masayoshi Son’s Large Schalificial Art Craft. United States, according to a memo seen by Reuters and a source familiar with the plan. The cut is the third round of discharge at the Japanese investment conglomerate’s flagship fund since 2022. Vision Fund currently employs 44 people, according to its website. Unlike previous rounds, when the group was saddled with huge losses, the latest reduction came after the fund reported its strongest quarterly performance since June 2021, driven by profits in public interest such as Nvidia and the South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang. The move indicates a pivot away from a broad portfolio of starting investments. While the fund will continue to make new bets, the remaining staff will dedicate more resources to Son’s ambitious AI initiatives, such as the proposed $ 500 billion Stargate project -an initiative to build a large network of US data centers in partnership with Openai, the source added. A Vision Fund spokeswoman confirmed the layoffs without commenting on the details, and in a statement said: “We are constantly adjusting the organization to best perform our long-term strategy-which makes bold investments with high conviction in AI and breakthrough technologies and creates long-term value for our stakeholders.” The restructuring is a return to Son’s classic high-risk approach to a great reward for making massive, concentrated bets, continuing from the expansive venture capital model that defined the last era of the Vision Fund, and a period in which the group was forced to sell assets and rebuild the credibility. This shift to capital -intensive AI infrastructure reflects where Son – who made its name with big bets and was an early champion of AI – see the road up. He is now aggressively engaged in new investments in foundation models and the infrastructure layer, sometimes against premium valuations. Over the past 12 months, Son has invested $ 9.7 billion in Openai by Vision Fund 2, which runs a total of about $ 65.8 billion. SoftBank also plans a capital -intensive infrastructure strategy centered on its crown jewel, Chip Designer ARM. It acquired Chip Firms Graphcore and Ampere Computing and took them in Intel and Nvidia. These movements are aimed at building an ecosystem that spans chips, data centers and models to support future AI adoptions. The capital-intensive strategy poses execution risk, underlined by recent delays in the US Stargate project and a similar joint venture with Openai in Japan, Reuters reported this week. Softbank CFO Yoshimitsu Goto said the company has a “very safe level” of 4 trillion yen ($ 27 billion) on the company’s most recent earnings call in August. (Reporting by Krystal Hu in San Francisco; Editing by Matthew Lewis)