SoftBank Group's Vision Fund is undergoing a significant strategic shift, implementing a third round of global layoffs that will see nearly 20% of its team depart. This restructuring redirects resources towards founder Masayoshi Son’s ambitious, large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) investments in the United States, signaling a clear pivot away from a broad portfolio of startup investments.

Unlike previous layoff rounds since 2022, which coincided with major losses for the group, these latest reductions follow the Vision Fund's strongest quarterly performance since June 2021. This recent success was driven by gains in public holdings such as Nvidia and South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang, providing a different context for the organizational changes.

The move marks a return to Son's classic high-risk, high-reward investment approach, focusing on massive, concentrated wagers. This strategy contrasts sharply with the sprawling venture capital model that defined the previous era of the Vision Fund, a period during which the group was compelled to de-risk, sell assets, and rebuild credibility following billions in losses from its high-profile investment in office-sharing startup WeWork.

Son's renewed focus on capital-intensive AI infrastructure highlights where he believes the path back to market leadership lies. The remaining Vision Fund staff will now dedicate more resources to ambitious AI initiatives, including the proposed $500 billion Stargate project. This initiative aims to build a vast network of U.S. data centers in partnership with OpenAI, an entity in which Vision Fund 2 has already invested $9.7 billion over the past 12 months. SoftBank is aggressively pursuing new investments in foundation models and the infrastructure layer, often at premium valuations.

Beyond direct investments in AI models, SoftBank's comprehensive infrastructure strategy is also centered on its crown jewel, chip designer Arm. The group has acquired chip firms like Graphcore and Ampere Computing and taken strategic stakes in industry giants such as Intel and Nvidia. These coordinated moves are designed to build an integrated ecosystem spanning chips, data centers, and AI models to support future widespread AI adoption.

However, this capital-intensive strategy is not without execution risks. Recent reports have highlighted delays in both the U.S. Stargate project and a similar joint venture with OpenAI in Japan. Despite these challenges, SoftBank CFO Yoshimitsu Goto stated during the company's most recent earnings call in August that SoftBank maintains a