SoftBank Bets $100 Bn on AI Chips, Takes Aim at NVIDIA

Competing in the AI dominance race, SoftBank's CEO, Masayoshi Son, has announced a plan to gather a whopping $100 billion for his AI project. This move is like a direct challenge to the world’s third largest company NVIDIA, known for its computer graphic chips. According to Bloomberg sources, SoftBank wants to put $30 billion of its own money into this project and is asking for another $70 billion from investors in the Middle East.

The main goal of this huge investment is to make SoftBank a big player in the AI business and maybe shake things up for Nvidia. The plan is to work closely with a UK company called Arm, in which SoftBank already owns a 90 per cent stake following its IPO.

Recently, Arm got a lot of attention when Nvidia said they're putting $147.3 million into it, with the blessing of SoftBank. This move shows how the tech industry is changing, with big companies trying to be on top in new areas like AI  and making computer chips.

SoftBank's journey with Arm has been kind of like a rollercoaster. They bought Arm for $32 billion in 2016, but when they tried to sell it to Nvidia for $40 billion in 2022, they ran into problems with the rules that say whether such deals are allowed. It's a reminder that these kinds of big money moves are not easy.

But Masayoshi Son isn't the only one with big plans in the AI world. Sam Altman who runs a company called OpenAI is another ambitious industry insider. He's talking to investors, including the government of the UAE, to get money for making chips due to scarcity. The amount he has demanded is a shocking $7 trillion. 

At several instances, Altman has repeatedly emphasised the need for additional GPU prowess to support OpenAI's objectives in AI research and development. With global chip sales reaching $527 billion last year and projected to surpass $1 trillion annually by 2030, the race is set to intensify.