SoftBank expands its investments beyond tech startups; buys $1.2 billion stake in Amazon with additional investments in Netflix, Tesla, others

Just last week, we wrote about SoftBank after the Japanese tech giant posted a $12 billion quarterly profit following historic losses of $13 billion in 2019. Until now, SoftBank Group has primarily invested in unlisted technology startup companies. That changed today after the company announced that it has bought a $1.2 billion stake in e-commerce firm Amazon. The revelation comes in new regulatory filings showed on Monday.

With billions of dollars in the war chest, SoftBank also disclosed it bought stakes in Netflix Inc, Tesla Inc, Microsoft Corp, and Alphabet Inc, the latest filings showed. The tech giant also bought a stake in chip supplier Nvidia Corp worth around $220 million based on Friday’s closing price.

In addition, SoftBank is diversifying its investments and pivoting towards investing outside its $100 billion Vision Fund with its focus on unlisted, late-stage startups. The fund has suffered a setback as the group saw the value of its holdings fall below the acquisition price.

To date, Softbank Vision Fund has stakes in the following companies: Arm Holdings, Fortress Investment Group, Boston Dynamics, Sprint (85%), Alibaba (29.5%), Yahoo Japan (48.17%), Brightstar (87.1%), Uber (15%), Didi Chuxing (ca.20%), Ola (ca.30%), Renren (42.9%), InMobi (45%), Hike (25.8%), Snapdeal (ca.30%), Fanatics (ca.22%), Improbable Worlds (ca.50%), Paytm (ca.20%), OYO (42%), Ping An Insurance (7.41%)[6], Slack Technologies (ca.5%), WeWork (ca.80%), ZhongAn Online P&C Insurance (5%), Compass (ca.22%), AUTO1 Group (ca.20%), Wag (45%), Katerra (ca.28%), Cruise Automation (ca.19.6%), ParkJockey[7], Tokopedia (Indonesia), and many more.

Founded in 1981 by Masayoshi Son in September 1981, the Tokyo, Japan-based SoftBank is a multinational telecommunications and internet corporation focused on broadband, fixed-line telecommunications, e-commerce, internet, technology services, finance, media and marketing, and other businesses. Softbank is the sixth-largest telephone operating company with total revenue of $74.7 billion. The company has invested in a lot of startups including Uber.