SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son, as per a report from Bloomberg, is planning to raise USD 100 billion to establish an AI chip company, aiming to complement the group’s ARM business.

The report indicates that Masayoshi Son plans to name the new artificial intelligence chip venture “Izanagi,” after the deity of creation and life in Japanese mythology, and Son himself will directly lead the project.

Regarding funding, reportedly, one proposed scheme under consideration involves SoftBank providing USD 30 billion, while another USD 70 billion may come from institutions in the Middle East.

However, details regarding the final funding sources and how the funds will be utilized in the future have not been disclosed by Masayoshi Son at this time.

Masayoshi Son is highly optimistic about the development of AI, claiming to be a heavy user of ChatGPT in an interview and engaging in conversations with it almost every day. In October 2023, Son expressed his belief that within the next decade, artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence in nearly all domains, achieving a level of general artificial intelligence.

SoftBank’s UK-based chip intellectual property company, Arm, raised approximately USD 4.87 billion in its initial public offering. At the time of Arm’s listing, Son stated that he is a big believer in artificial intelligence and that Arm will also be at the core beneficiary of the AI revolution.

At the shareholders’ meeting on June 21, 2023, Masayoshi Son presented a chart of human evolution titled “Evolution Speed.”

The chart depicted a flat curve from the birth of humanity to the agricultural revolution, followed by a slight increase during the industrial and information revolutions. This indicated that the curve representing the development of artificial intelligence would experience a rapid upward surge within a few years, with its slope approaching a nearly vertical line.

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(Photo credit: SoftBank News)

According to TrendForce, the scope of IoT devices continue to expand under a wave of global digitization and smart machines including in industrial robotics, AGV/AMR, smart phones, smart speakers, smart cameras, etc. In addition, the deepening application of technologies such as autonomous driving, image recognition, speech and semantic recognition, and computing in various fields has catalyzed the rapid growth of AI chip and technology markets. The size of the global AI chip market is expected to reach US$39 billion in 2022, with a growth rate of 18.2%.

Since current utilization of AI chips are mostly in cloud computing, security, robotics, and automotive applications, they will enter a period of accelerated growth in 2023. In particular, the two fields of cloud computing and automotive applications will lead rapid market growth. By 2025, the size of the global AI chip market size is expected to reach US$74 billion, with CAGR from 2022 to 2025 reaching 23.8%.

ASIC chips have wide-ranging prospects, with market share in AI chips increasing year by year

From 2020 to 2021, the amount of data generated by datacenters and various terminal devices continued to rise, pushing chip technology to its limit, with demand for computing power becoming more difficult to meet. Therefore, many manufacturers have successively invested in high-end IC design and development. With increasing demand from various parties, the AI chip market is set to grow rapidly. The size of the AI chip market is expected to reach US$93 billion in 2026. CPU and GPU still occupy the lion’s share of the AI chip market and are growing steadily, while the ASIC market has expansive prospects and its advantages and characteristics can assist users in data processing, consumer electronics, telecommunication systems, and industrial computing develop product portfolios and shorten the innovation cycle of products, services, or systems.

TrendForce research shows that CPU, GPU, and ASIC chips will account for 33%, 34%, and 26% of the AI market, respectively, in 2026. The ASIC chip market will grow the fastest for two reasons. First, demand in the consumer electronic equipment market has increased and most developers of small and medium-sized equipment prefer 7nm ASICs. Second, workloads and structural demands of 5G, low-orbit satellite communications, cloud, and edge computing continue to increase, as telecommunications systems are the largest end-use market.

Since current utilization of AI chips are mostly in cloud computing, security, robotics, and automotive applications, they will enter a period of accelerated growth in 2023. In particular, the two fields of cloud computing and automotive applications will lead rapid market growth. By 2025, the size of the global AI chip market size is expected to reach US$74 billion, with CAGR from 2022 to 2025 reaching 23.8%.

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