Vision Fund II

SoftBank is a Japanese company, but what type of company it is confuses many people. It was founded in 1981 as a computer parts store, then went into the publishing industry, later entered the Internet business. SoftBank Group has been a very successful investor which holds stakes in firms across various industries, including telecommunication, finance, tech and other businesses. Many of these firms are well known, for example, Uber, Didi Chuxing, WeWork, Ele.me, Alibaba. Now SoftBank is planning to launch its Vision Fund II. Since its initial Vision Fund has made a huge success, lots of attention has been drawn to this second Vision Fund.

Mr Son’s plan for his second Vision Fund seems more ambitious than his first one, with bigger at more than $100 billion. This fund is a very exclusive fund that only a very limited number of investors are able to join this fund. However, some major investors are not included, including some sovereign wealth funds from the Middle East and Mr Son said he was in talks with these funds. Of course, we cannot use the previous performance to predict the future, which was also mentioned by SoftBank in this project. However, most people do not care, many people believe successful people will keep succeeding. And many successful people have not failed others’ expectations about them.

It is true that Vision Fund II may have a higher probability to succeed than other similar type of funds, because its size and network in the industry makes the firms it invests are able to gain access to greater resources and markets. However, there are more and more venture capital funds focusing on the tech industry, since the returns in the tech industry are significantly higher than the returns in other industries. This will be great news for tech startups, but may mean the returns for these venture capital funds can be lowered due to the increasing competition.

Personally speaking, I still think Vision Fund II can generate positive returns, but I do not think it can be as successful as the first one.