SoftBank’s first vision fund sent shock waves across the global startup world with its unusually high bets on tech startups that are yet to demonstrate any sizable revenue and profits. It is quite another thing that few of its high profile bets have failed to fire, including the co-working giant WeWork that is now struggling to stay afloat after its highly anticipated IPO collapsed.
But apparently few bad investments are not going to make Japanese tech conglomerate averse to taking new risky investments; as such Masayoshi Son’s company has always taken pride in taking boldest of risks when the going gets tough.
Therefore, the industry experts were hardly surprised when the reports started swirling across that SoftBank’s second vision fund will be much larger than its first one. The exact amount of the funding corpus is still not known but it is been tentatively confirmed that the second corpus will be larger than first vision fund that had raised approximately $100 bn.
Another piece of interesting news that is making lot of buzz is that the second vision fund will look to invest in lot of new avenues. From pharmaceutical delivery startup, robotic burger making company to a startup that is focused on making lab-grown meat. Unverified sources have even named the startups that SoftBank is seriously contemplating on investment. This includes Alto Pharmacy, Creator and Memphis Meats.
All these three startups are pretty well funded and have gained significant tractions in their respective industries. For instance, Alto Pharmacy had raised whopping $50 Mn in October last year while Memphis Meats secured $14 Mn barely two weeks back.
It must be noted that SoftBank very rarely opts for seed or early stage funding and generally chooses mid stage investments in companies that have demonstrated some meaningful tractions in the market. Since the above mentioned companies do fulfill this critical prerequisite, they may very well be in Japanese tech conglomerate’s investment radar.
However, SoftBank would surely want to learn thing or two from its first vision fund and would want to avoid the same distressing mistakes in its upcoming fund.