SoftBank Vision Fund to boost tech investments and eyes up to 7 IPOs, CEO Says

After a tumultuous 2019 that saw the implosion of its WeWork public offering, SoftBank's Vision Fund expects up to seven companies that it has stakes in, to go public by the end of next year, its chief executive said. In tandem, it will boost its investment in artificial intelligence and technology companies that helped propel it back into the black amid the Covid-19 pandemic. "AI is going to disrupt and be a bigger disruptor than the internet, which took 20 years to disrupt a lot of industries," SoftBank Investment Advisers chief executive Rajeev Misra said in an interview with The National. "The acceleration of disruption went up dramatically due to Covid. The market share gain achieved by many of our companies that would have taken three years to happen, happened in the last nine months. Many of our companies have huge tail winds."