SoftBank India takes portfolio founders on AI tour in Silicon Valley
The goal of the tour was streamlining the integration of AI into product offerings
- Oct 26, 2023,
- Updated Oct 26, 2023 3:35 PM IST
As SoftBank shifts its investment strategy from “defence” to “offence mode” centred around the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, the India arm of the investing conglomerate took a group of its portfolio firms on a two-day AI tour in Silicon Valley earlier this week.
The primary goal of the tour, which saw the participation of 20 founders and CXOs from SoftBank India’s portfolio companies, was to streamline the integration of AI into their product offerings. Participating in the tour were senior executives from Lenskart, Paytm, Meesho, Icertis, Unacademy, Ola Electric, Eruditus, Whatfix, MindTickle, InMobi, and Sense HQ.
The tour featured interactions with the leadership of AI pioneers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Databricks, MosaicML, and Microsoft Azure AI, among others. Discussions centred around best practices and use cases, comparison between proprietary and open-source LLMs, strategies for delivering and measuring Return on Investment (RoI), recent breakthroughs, and precautions. These discussions will now progress to bilateral interactions.
Per a recent Financial Times report, SoftBank is actively pursuing investments in the AI sector, with plans to allocate substantial funds, potentially in the range of tens of billions of dollars. Additionally, the company is negotiating a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has been a vocal advocate for ChatGPT. In June, Son said he is a “heavy user” of ChatGPT and that he believes it has the potential to revolutionise the way we interact with computers.
Son has long argued that AI is the driving force behind his investing activity.
SoftBank’s investment arm, the Vision Fund, reported a first quarter profit of $1.1 billion, marking the first such profit in six quarters, thanks to the rising valuations of its portfolio companies in the public market. Vision Fund has been an active investor in India. Its portfolio includes Meesho, Oyo, Swiggy, PolicyBazaar, and Delhivery. Despite Vision Fund’s commendable performance, SoftBank Group faced a challenging quarter, posting a net loss of $3.3 billion.
As SoftBank shifts its investment strategy from “defence” to “offence mode” centred around the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution, the India arm of the investing conglomerate took a group of its portfolio firms on a two-day AI tour in Silicon Valley earlier this week.
The primary goal of the tour, which saw the participation of 20 founders and CXOs from SoftBank India’s portfolio companies, was to streamline the integration of AI into their product offerings. Participating in the tour were senior executives from Lenskart, Paytm, Meesho, Icertis, Unacademy, Ola Electric, Eruditus, Whatfix, MindTickle, InMobi, and Sense HQ.
The tour featured interactions with the leadership of AI pioneers including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, Databricks, MosaicML, and Microsoft Azure AI, among others. Discussions centred around best practices and use cases, comparison between proprietary and open-source LLMs, strategies for delivering and measuring Return on Investment (RoI), recent breakthroughs, and precautions. These discussions will now progress to bilateral interactions.
Per a recent Financial Times report, SoftBank is actively pursuing investments in the AI sector, with plans to allocate substantial funds, potentially in the range of tens of billions of dollars. Additionally, the company is negotiating a partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has been a vocal advocate for ChatGPT. In June, Son said he is a “heavy user” of ChatGPT and that he believes it has the potential to revolutionise the way we interact with computers.
Son has long argued that AI is the driving force behind his investing activity.
SoftBank’s investment arm, the Vision Fund, reported a first quarter profit of $1.1 billion, marking the first such profit in six quarters, thanks to the rising valuations of its portfolio companies in the public market. Vision Fund has been an active investor in India. Its portfolio includes Meesho, Oyo, Swiggy, PolicyBazaar, and Delhivery. Despite Vision Fund’s commendable performance, SoftBank Group faced a challenging quarter, posting a net loss of $3.3 billion.