Microsoft in discussion to invest in the second SoftBank Vision Fund – TechCrunch

SoftBank would be preparing for the announcement of a $ 40 billion investment in its second Vision Fund, according to a new Wall Street Journal report. The news of this gigantic investment comes after weeks of rumors that the Japanese telecom giant was striving to secure capital for its second fund, citing the mixed reception of investors in the company's original Vision Fund.

SoftBank declined to comment.

Goldman Sachs and Standard Chartered are among the first confirmed investors in the second Vision fund. SoftBank would negotiate with Microsoft to invest in the fund, provided that SoftBank encourages its portfolio companies to abandon Amazon Web Services for the benefit of Microsoft. Azure, the company's cloud platform. Microsoft declined to comment.

The Department of Justice is about to announce its approval of merger with Sprint, majority owned by SoftBank, starting this week. Once the merger is confirmed, SoftBank is expected to deploy additional capital in its second Vision Fund.

The first SoftBank Vision Fund, led by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, has been in the news since the mbad-market projects were announced at the end of 2016. In May 2017, the company made a first investment of nearly $ 93 billion, then increasing the size of the fund to 98 billions of dollars. The fund focuses primarily on global technology companies in a variety of sectors including the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, robotics, mobile applications and computing, cloud technologies and software, consumer technologies and technologies. financial. To date, he has invested large sums in Brandless, WeWork, Ola, Grab, Didi Chuxing, Uber, Lemonade and many others.

The main investors in the first fund are the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia and the Abu Dhabi National Wealth Fund, which triggered a debate within Silicon Valley on the ethics of accepting capital from the country. Saudi Arabia, country responsible for numerous human rights violations. Apple, Qualcomm and Foxconn Technology are among the first other Vision Fund sponsors.