SoftBank Group Chairman Masayoshi Son, whose company recently surpassed Toyota to become Japan's most valuable listed firm by market capitalization, projected that the revolution driven by artificial intelligence (AI) will be 50 times larger than the dot-com revolution of the 2000s.
In an interview with CNBC on Monday, local time, Son said, "The AI revolution will be more than 10 times, perhaps 50 times bigger than the dot-com bubble." A day earlier, SoftBank announced plans to invest 75 billion euros (approximately 132 trillion won) in France to build a 5-gigawatt (GW) AI data center.
Reflecting on the dot-com bubble that triggered a stock market crash, Son said it was "a painful, temporary blow, but merely a small hurdle ahead of greater long-term growth." He stressed, "The electronics and automobile industries collapsed in 1929, but they continued to grow over the following 100 years. There may be some corrections, but this will also mean the best investment opportunities."
The 1929 Great Depression and the 2000 dot-com bubble that Son referenced remain indelible crashes in U.S. history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, one of the three major indexes on the New York Stock Exchange, plunged 32% from September 1929 to July 1932, fueling massive unemployment. The 2000 dot-com bubble, which arose when the U.S. Federal Reserve raised interest rates amid widespread investment in internet firms, resulted in the Nasdaq index falling about 77% from its peak by October 2002. On this point, Son emphasized that the underlying trends in the major industries that drew enormous investment at the time continue to this day. He also assessed that "(the AI revolution) is the biggest technological revolution and realization humanity has experienced, like the dawn of the internet."
Responding to criticism that his investment portfolio is skewed toward OpenAI, Son explained, "OpenAI accounts for slightly more than 20%," adding, "The largest holding is Arm, the British semiconductor design company, which accounts for 50% of net assets." SoftBank's surging share price has also reflected the impact of OpenAI's upcoming listing.
The French investment is the largest AI infrastructure investment SoftBank has carried out in Europe. Son said the project would rely on project financing rather than the company's own capital, citing as an example a 10GW project in Ohio involving SoftBank and its affiliate SB Energy. CNBC reported that the Ohio project is set to soon enter long-term supply contracts with customers.
