According to a Bloomberg story, SoftBank will let go around 20% of the personnel at its investment arm, Vision Fund, after suffering considerable losses in the first half of the year. According to the article, the Vision Fund employs roughly 500 people, so the reductions should affect about 100 employees. The announcement is the latest in a turbulent year for the massive investor. SoftBank, an investor in well-known internet companies like Didi and Uber, informed investors in May that there would be a “stricter selection of investments” for the coming year. The disclosure was made as part of the company’s financial report for the March-end fiscal year.
The declining markets have harmed SoftBank, particularly the underperformance of businesses like the South Korean e-commerce platform Coupang, Didi, a ride-hailing app headquartered in China, Grab, a logistics company based in Singapore, and others. Then, just last month, with the disclosure of a $22.7 loss, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said errors had been made in the fund’s investments. Son said during a news conference, “I grew a little delirious while we were bringing out enormous earnings, and looking back at myself now, I am pretty embarrassed and remorseful.”
The best demonstration of SoftBank’s paradigm shift may have occurred in February when the company refused to pay Cruise the $1.35 billion promised as part of a contract when the company had successfully deployed its first fleet of vehicles on a commercial scale. Instead, for $2.1 billion, General Motors bought SoftBank’s stock share in Cruise. The situation with SoftBank is possibly the finest example of how different this year is from 2021.
