SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has told AI doubters they are spitting upwards while he bets the farm on superintelligence.
Son told executives at his annual SoftBank World shindig that AI could account for 20 per cent of global output by 2040. He reckoned attacking AI was the modern version of moaning about cars and aeroplanes.
“Those who dislike AI have essentially refused their own evolution. Those who condemn AI are themselves spitting upwards,” he said,
According to the Financial Times the comments came as Son, a veteran investor with a taste for giant swings, buries SoftBank deeper into the AI gold rush. The outfit has been piling cash into Arm, OpenAI and other tech companies.
Investors are getting twitchy about SoftBank Group’s rising leverage and possible delays to OpenAI’s initial public offering. That has not stopped Son from trying to wedge himself across data centre infrastructure, AI models, chips and robots.
Son wants SoftBank at the centre of what he sees as the march to superintelligence. The idea is to be everywhere the AI money flows, preferably before everyone else works out where the pipes are.
There has been a public backlash over AI’s likely impact on jobs, but Son had little time for the hesitant. He took particular aim at Japanese business leaders who failed to build new giants during the internet era.
“Modest presidents” who are not prepared to embrace AI to become number one in their industry within 15 years “should play the role of spouse. The most important thing for the president to say is ‘AI, AI, AI’.”
The 68-year-old was in full bull mode on AI’s economic potential. He predicted it would account for $46 trillion of global GDP within 15 years and generate annual profits worth half that amount.
To make that happen, Son said the world would need 3 terawatts of data centres by 2040. That would provide the compute for trillions of AI agents and billions of humanoid robots, which sounds like a procurement department’s nervous breakdown.
The figure is about a third of the total installed power capacity worldwide, according to International Energy Agency estimates. SoftBank’s answer appears to involve a lot more juice.
Son said gas-fired power generation would be needed to get there. Longer term, he claimed nuclear fusion would take its place. Plenty of startups and research programmes are chasing fusion around the world. None has yet shown sustained power generation, but that rarely slows down a tech billionaire.
SoftBank’s energy arm has been selected to deliver a $33 billion gas-fired power plant in Ohio. The controversial project sits within a $550 billion investment framework agreed by Washington and Tokyo last year, following US President Donald Trump’s lowering of tariffs on Japan.
