Arm's bigger brethren? Founder of Softbank seeks $100bn war chest to build AI chip behemoth to rival Nvidia, Intel — but is it too little, too late?

The founder of Softbank Group has reportedly set his sights on a new venture: a $100 billion AI chip company named Project Izanagi which could one day rival the dominance of AI leaders such as Nvidia, Intel and AMD.

According to Bloomberg, Masayoshi Son says $30 billion of the required funding for Project Izanagi, which will focus on artificial general intelligence (AGI), is expected to come from Softbank, with the remaining $70 billion potentially sourced from Middle Eastern investors. However, the specifics of the funding and execution are still under wraps, and the project may undergo further evolution.

Project Izanagi is envisioned to work in synergy with Arm, a chip design business in which Softbank holds a 90% stake. However, exactly how the two businesses will interact remains a mystery for now.

An impossible dream?

Despite facing various setbacks in his startup investments, Son’s fervor for AGI is palpable. He was quoted by Bloomberg as saying, “AGI is what every AI expert is after. But when you ask them about a detailed definition, a number, the timing, how much computing power, how much smarter AGI is than the human intelligence, most of them don’t have an answer. I have my own answer: I am convinced AGI will be real in 10 years.”

The task of building a company to compete successfully against Nvidia is a formidable one. Nvidia boasts a wealth of talented hardware engineers, highly competitive hardware, and a ubiquitous CUDA software stack, which has been evolving for over 16 years.

It makes sense for Son’s Project Izanagi’s AI processors to employ technologies such as instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Arm to give it a head start, but the new venture may also choose to look elsewhere. Softbank is one of the companies rumored to be interested in buying cash-strapped UK chip designer Graphcore.