SoftBank's Son Seeks $100 Billion for AI Acquisitions as Venture Boom Shows Signs of Cooling

Masayoshi Son is pursuing up to $100 billion from Gulf investors to establish a new acquisition fund armed with AI, even as the venture capital market signals an industry entering its final growth phase. SoftBank Group's founder has begun early talks with sovereign wealth funds and state investors in the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf states to back a vehicle that would purchase companies and deploy AI technology to improve their operations, according to reports in October 2026. The proposed fund represents an ambitious escalation of Son's AI strategy following SoftBank's recent $30 billion commitment to OpenAI and a record $11.1 billion corporate bond issuance to fuel AI expansion. However, the timing of such an enormous capital push carries a warning signal: market data suggests the world's AI investment boom is transitioning from a phase of rapid exploration and buildout into a more selective, return-focused period in which capital concentration is intensifying among a shrinking group of winners.