{"id":115832,"date":"2020-11-13T20:23:18","date_gmt":"2020-11-14T04:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/softbank-eyes-smaller-bets-bigger-returns-in-vision-fund-rethink"},"modified":"2020-11-13T20:23:18","modified_gmt":"2020-11-14T04:23:18","slug":"softbank-eyes-smaller-bets-bigger-returns-in-vision-fund-rethink","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2020\/11\/softbank-eyes-smaller-bets-bigger-returns-in-vision-fund-rethink","title":{"rendered":"SoftBank eyes smaller bets, bigger returns in Vision Fund rethink"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/softbank-eyes-smaller-bets-bigger-returns-in-vision-fund-rethink.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The quiet shift in strategy, which brings the Vision Fund\u2019s approach closer to that of a traditional venture capital investor, may ease concerns over big, bold bets going sour, a factor that has left a major gap between SoftBank\u2019s market capitalization and the sum of its investments.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>TOKYO \u2014 SoftBank Group\u2019s Vision Fund is turning to a new strategy as a global pandemic and government stimulus distort tech valuations: Invest smaller in hopes for bigger returns.<\/p>\n<p>After raising nearly $100 billion and investing $85 billion in high-profile companies like Uber Technologies, WeWork and ByteDance over three years, the Vision Fund is now focusing on making smaller bets in early-stage startups.<\/p>\n<p>Among the investments it has led are $100 million in Zhangmen, a Chinese online education startup; $150 million in Unacademy, an Indian peer; and $100 million in Biofourmis, a U.S. startup that tracks health data using wearable devices. In total, it has approved 19 investments worth $3.5 billion for \u201cVision Fund 2\u201d \u2014 a vehicle currently funded entirely by SoftBank.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The quiet shift in strategy, which brings the Vision Fund\u2019s approach closer to that of a traditional venture capital investor, may ease concerns over big, bold bets going sour, a factor that has left a major gap between SoftBank\u2019s market capitalization and the sum of its investments. TOKYO \u2014 SoftBank Group\u2019s Vision Fund is turning [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":417,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,32,45,1490,1495,1977],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-education","category-finance","category-government","category-health","category-wearables"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/417"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}