SoftBank Proposes AI Tour For Founders To Increase Tech Adoption

CIOTechOutlook Team | Monday, 28 August 2023, 08:47 IST

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Next month, a group of Indian startup entrepreneurs will go to Silicon Valley with SoftBank Group Corp. as the Japanese investor intensifies attempts to integrate the technology into its portfolio companies.
 
Sumer Juneja, managing partner in charge of investments at SoftBank's Vision Fund for Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India, said in an interview in Mumbai that the investor is assisting portfolio companies in implementing AI and has been setting up meetings for the founders it supports with the top players in the field. Without mentioning any names specifically, he said that SoftBank anticipates taking the majority of the 20 founders from its Indian companies on the visit. Ola, a ride-hailing company, Oyo Hotels, and Swiggy, a delivery company, are all part of its local portfolio.
 
SoftBank, headed by Masayoshi Son, almost stopped funding startups in the first quarter of 2016, but started up again in the second quarter. With almost $40 billion in cash on hand, the Japanese corporation is currently bringing chip designer Arm Holdings Ltd. public in a deal that will earn more cash.
 
“What we don’t want to do is to invest in a company that misses the AI wave and then three years later turn irrelevant,” Juneja said. “Having a sophisticated tech team and being in the right industry where it could use AI to make the business model even more efficient are must-haves for us to write new cheques.”
 
Due of the international surge in popularity of products like ChatGPT, investors are rushing to support AI firms. If they do not immediately implement AI use cases, companies in various industries, including software-as-a-service, would go out of business, claims Juneja. The best way to use AI now, meanwhile, is the largest problem.
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