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Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp.

Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images

SoftBank Group chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son on Wednesday said that the Japanese investment firm plans to shift from “defense mode” to “offense mode” and wants to capitalize on the AI boom.

“Now, the time has come to shift to offense mode,” Son said during a shareholders’ annual general meeting.

“In the past few years, we focused on being [on] ‘defense.’ Three years ago, we didn’t have a lot of cash on hand. But because we have been in defense mode, we have built our cash on hand to five trillion yen ($35.3 billion),” Son said.

“We are ready to shift to offense mode. I am excited about that,” said Son.

The tech conglomerate, which engages in venture capital investing through its Vision Fund, has had its fair share of ups and downs. It was in “defense mode” as it halted new investments and trimmed its stake in Alibaba. In May, the Vision Fund reported a record $32 billion loss.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son says the giant is ready to shift to 'offense' mode

“What I am interested in most, what I am working on most, is the AI revolution. I believe that mankind is going to be exceeded by computer or AI,” said Son.

“We would like to be [in] the leading position for the AI revolution,” said Son.

SoftBank shares rose 2.63% in Wednesday morning trade.

The Vision Fund has invested in Chinese tech firms and therefore was hit by Beijing’s crackdown on the country’s tech sector and the subsequent plunge in share prices. SoftBank’s portfolio companies include ByteDance, DiDi Grocery, Coupang and more.

SoftBank is gearing up for the IPO of Arm, the U.K.-based chip design firm it acquired in 2016. Arm filed for the listing in the U.S. SoftBank’s CFO Yoshimitsu Goto said the IPO process is “going smoothly.”

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Artificial intelligence has seen explosive growth in recent months, fueled by chatbot ChatGPT’s virality. ChatGPT has amazed researchers and the general public with its ability to generate humanlike responses to users’ prompts.

Son said on Tuesday that he is “a heavy user of ChatGPT” and that ChatGPT is “amazing.”

“The fortunes of SoftBank [are] looking to turn,” said Amir Anvarzadeh, Japan equity market strategist at Asymmetric Advisors on CNBC’s “Street Signs Asia” Wednesday after SoftBank’s shareholders’ meeting.

“You can see why Nvidia wanted to buy Arm a few years back because obviously, they wanted all of the architecture to themselves. Now it kind of makes sense, looking back.” The U.S. chip maker had dropped out of the $40 billion deal to acquire Arm.

“$30 billion is what we thought could be what Arm is worth. I reckon now, even $60 billion, might not seem too insane, given the backdrop,” said Anvarzadeh.

SoftBank's fortunes are 'looking to turn,' strategist says

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Spotify says it paid nearly 1,500 artists $1 million or more in royalties for 2024 streams

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Spotify says it paid nearly 1,500 artists  million or more in royalties for 2024 streams

In this photo illustration, the Spotify music app is seen on a phone on June 04, 2024 in New York City.

Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

Spotify is minting music millionaires.

Nearly 1,500 artists generated over $1 million in royalties from Spotify in 2024, the company said Wednesday in its annual Loud and Clear Report.

Spotify said more than 80% of the artists in that pool didn’t have a song reach the app’s Global Daily Top 50 chart.

“Spotify has helped level the playing field for artists at every stage of their careers,” read a portion of the report. “Success in the streaming era doesn’t require a decade-spanning catalog nor a chart-topping hit.”

The news comes about a month after the company reported a fourth-quarter earnings beat that saw the Swedish music streamer record its first full year of profitability. The company said it paid an all-time high of $10 billion in royalties to the music industry for the year.

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Salesforce pledges to invest $1 billion in Singapore over five years in AI push

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Salesforce pledges to invest  billion in Singapore over five years in AI push

Marc Benioff, Chairman & CEO of Salesforce, speaking on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 22nd, 2025.

Gerry Miller | CNBC

Salesforce on Wednesday announced plans to invest $1 billion in Singapore over the next five years.

The cloud software giant said the investment is designed to accelerate the country’s digital transformation and the adoption of Salesforce’s flagship AI offering Agentforce.

Salesforce is among the many technology companies hoping to boost revenue with generative AI features.

The company launched the newest version of Agentforce last month. It has previously described the system — which it says can tackle sophisticated questions in Salesforce’s Slack communications app, based on all available data — as the first digital AI platform for enterprises.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is scheduled to speak at CNBC’s CONVERGE LIVE at around 9:25 a.m. Singapore time (9:25 p.m. ET) on Wednesday.

“We are in an incredible new era of digital labor where every business will be transformed by autonomous agents that augment the work of humans, revolutionizing productivity and enabling every company to scale without limits,” Benioff said in a statement.

“Singapore is at the forefront of this shift, and as the world’s largest provider of digital labor through our Agentforce platform,” he added.

Salesforce said Agentforce can help Singapore to “rapidly expand” its labor force in several key service and public sector roles at a time when the country is grappling with an aging population and declining birth rates.

Jermaine Loy, managing director of the Singapore Economic Development Board, welcomed Salesforce’s investment, saying it will help to boost the country’s efforts “to build a vibrant hub for AI innovation.”

— CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.

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Reddit rallies after three-day slump as analyst calls sell-off ‘excessive’

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Reddit rallies after three-day slump as analyst calls sell-off 'excessive'

Reddit CEO Steve Huffman stands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) after ringing a bell on the floor setting the share price at $47 in its initial public offering (IPO) on March 21, 2024 in New York City.

Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Reddit shares rose more than 10% on Tuesday, reversing a three-day slump that coincided with a broader decline among technology companies.

Despite Tuesday’s gains, Reddit shares are still roughly 30% below the close on Wednesday.

Reddit’s stock market upswing was likely bolstered by a Loop Capital analyst note published Tuesday that reiterated a buy rating and characterized the company’s shares as “extremely attractive.” The analyst note said that Reddit’s 50% drop on Wall Street in the past month “is excessive,” and that the social media company “has the biggest upside potential relative to Street estimates in our coverage universe.”

The company’s shares dropped more than 15% in February after the company reported weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter user numbers as a result of a Google search change that temporarily hurt its search-derived traffic. Although Reddit said at the time that it had recovered from the algorithmic shift, the user number miss spooked investors.

Reddit’s shares have since spiraled downward along with other tech companies like Apple, Nvidia and Tesla off of concerns related to President Donald Trump‘s tariffs and growing fears of a recession. The seven most valuable tech companies lost more than $750 billion in market value on Monday with Nasdaq experiencing its biggest decline since 2022.

Loop Capital managing director Alan Gould acknowledged in the note that investors are operating in a “risk-off market environment,” but he contended that Reddit “has been one of the top performing stocks over the past year,” aside from its most recent dip.

“RDDT wildly exceeded ours and Street estimates for 2024, which explains why the stock increased almost 7-fold from a $34 IPO price to a peak of $230 in less than a year,” Gould wrote, noting Reddit’s growing revenue and improved advertising tools, among other positive developments.

Reddit’s fourth-quarter sales grew 71% year over year to $428 million, which represents the fastest growth rate for any quarter since 2022.

“In our view, RDDT deserves the revaluation it had experiencing based on the growth it has shown in the recent earnings reports and future projected growth driven by the ability to narrow the ARPU gap, and data licensing possibilities,” Gould wrote.

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