4th April 2026
If you've ever watched a flock of sheep suddenly bolt because one of them thought it saw something suspicious, you already understand the global AI investment landscape. SoftBank just happens to be the sheep at the front sprinting full tilt, eyes wide, convinced it’s leading a glorious charge into the future while the rest of the herd gallops behind shouting, "Wait for us!"
Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s chief visionary‑in‑chief, has declared he is “all‑in” on AI. Judging by the numbers, he’s not exaggerating. SoftBank is pouring tens of billions into AI companies, AI infrastructure, AI chips, AI dreams or anything with the letters A and I in close proximity. If someone launched a company called “AI‑Flavoured Biscuits,” SoftBank would probably invest before the biscuits left the oven.
The trouble is, SoftBank’s track record looks less like a carefully curated portfolio and more like the receipts from a very expensive night out. The Vision Fund has had years where it lost more money than some countries’ GDP. But instead of slowing down, Son has simply decided that the solution to losing billions is to spend even more billions — a strategy that would make most accountants faint.
And yet, here’s the twist. SoftBank isn’t the oddball. It’s the purest expression of the mania gripping the entire tech world. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta they’re all doing the same thing, just with better lighting and fewer dramatic speeches.
Microsoft has tied its future to OpenAI so tightly that if ChatGPT sneezes, Microsoft stock catches a cold. Google is throwing money at Gemini and DeepMind like a gambler trying to win back his losses before the casino closes.
Amazon is investing in Anthropic partly because it believes in the future of AI, and partly because it doesn’t want AWS to look like the kid who forgot his homework. Meta, meanwhile, is open‑sourcing AI models at high speed, possibly to distract everyone from the fact that the metaverse cost more than a fleet of aircraft carriers.
Nvidia is the only one actually making money by selling the GPUs that power all this AI fever. It’s the classic gold‑rush dynamic. The miners go broke, the shovel‑seller buys a yacht. But even Nvidia knows that if AI demand cools, its share price could deflate faster than a bouncy castle in a gale.
What makes the whole spectacle even funnier is that everyone is betting on the same handful of companies. OpenAI, Anthropic, a few chipmakers, a few cloud giants and that’s it. It’s not diversification it’s herd behaviour with a Silicon Valley accent. If one of these companies stumbles, half the global tech sector will fall over like dominoes.
Governments, of course, are cheering this on. They love the idea of being “AI leaders,” even if they’re not entirely sure what that means. They hand out subsidies, host summits, and talk about “innovation ecosystems” with the enthusiasm of someone who’s just discovered a new buzzword. What they don’t talk about is what happens if the AI bubble bursts. Or what happens when national economies become dependent on a handful of private companies whose business plans are essentially “trust us, it’ll work out.”
SoftBank’s AI crusade is bold, risky, and occasionally hilarious. But it’s also a mirror held up to the entire tech industry. An industry that has convinced itself that the only thing more dangerous than betting everything on AI is not betting everything on AI. If the technology delivers, these companies will look like geniuses. If it doesn’t, they’ll look like gamblers who mistook adrenaline for strategy.
Either way, it’s going to be one hell of a show.