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(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp. Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son acknowledged that his company’s partnership with Mohammed Bin Salman’s Public Investment Fund has failed to fully deliver for the Saudi prince.
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“He already had his own vision,” Son said Friday in a panel discussion at an FII Institute conference in Miami Beach, Florida. “We just met at the right time. But I haven’t still given him enough return. I still owe him.”
SoftBank’s flagship Vision Fund has sold off or written down billions of dollars’ worth of its publicly listed holdings in recent years as founder Son shifted away from the venture-capital deals that were once an obsession and toward strategic investments in semiconductors and artificial intelligence. The fund has sold down stakes in companies such as Coupang Inc., DoorDash Inc. and Grab Holdings Ltd. Son said Friday that’s he’s often bet on the “wrong horse,” including WeWork Cos.
In November, Rajeev Misra stepped down as co-CEO of SoftBank’s Vision Fund, bringing to a close a tumultuous tenure at the helm of what had been the largest-ever venture-capital fund. Misra was instrumental in helping Son set up the Vision Fund in 2017, helping him raise nearly $100 billion from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Apple Inc. and other backers. In late 2018, Saudi Arabia’s PIF made another $45 billion commitment to SoftBank’s second massive Vision Fund.
Earlier this month, SoftBank reported a net loss of ¥369.2 billion ($2.5 billion) for the fiscal third quarter, compared with a profit of ¥950 billion a year earlier. The Vision Fund unit logged a ¥310 billion loss, after shares of public holdings such as Coupang and Didi Global Inc. gave up some of their gains from the previous quarter.
--With assistance from Georgia Hall.
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