A rich founder wants to build a company that even wants to compete with Nvidia. After all, the billionaire wants to invest around 100 billion euros. But no one knows yet whether this will work.
Masayoshi Son, the founder of SoftBank Group, plans to raise 100 billion euros for a new chip project called Project Izanagi that will rival Nvidia in artificial intelligence processors.
This is what TomsHardware reports, referring to a report from Bloomberg. The billionaire wants to create an independent company. But a lot of information is not yet known.
Second company next to chip company ARM Holdings
What exactly should be developed? Son wants to start a company that complements chip design firm Arm Holdings Plc. The billionaire wants to use this to build a strong, independent company. However, according to Bloomberg (paywall), much of the information is under wraps because the conversations have so far been private.
Whether the whole project works is another matter. After all, Nvidia has 16 years of development behind it and has lots of engineers and competitive hardware. Nvidia’s AI chips in particular are always a big topic. Building a company that can successfully compete with Nvidia will therefore be a challenge.
The name of the company is also interesting: Izanagi is the Japanese god of creation and life and that shows what an ambitious idea is behind the project.
Where does the money come from? SoftBank is said to have around 6.2 trillion yen in funds available. That’s the equivalent of around 40 billion euros. Son reportedly wants to invest 30 billion of this himself, and another 70 billion will come from the Middle East. However, this is not yet completely certain and the data is all still speculative.
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