SoftBank Group’s flagship Vision Fund has quietly sold off or written down billions of dollars’ worth of its publicly-listed holdings in recent years as founder Masayoshi Son shifts away from the venture capital deals that were once an obsession and toward strategic investments in semiconductors and artificial intelligence.
Since the end of 2021, the world’s biggest startup fund has seen its U.S.-listed portfolio shrink by almost $29 billion, as it sold down stakes in companies such as Coupang, DoorDash and Grab Holdings, and as share prices fell, regulatory filings show.
That figure doesn’t include the sale of the Vision Fund’s stake in chip designer Arm Holdings back to SoftBank last year.