Softbank Group founder Masayoshi Son is interested to set up a chip venture that can compete with Nvidia. The unit will make chips essential for AI.

The capital investment of Softbank will be $30 billion, and another $70 billion will be possibly raised from institutions in the middle east. The total project cost would be $100 billion, one of the largest investments in AI arena since the advent of ChatGPT, dwarfing Microsoft’s contribution of $10 billion in OpenAI.

The project has been code named Izanagi, the Japanese God of creation and life, partly because the name includes the initials AGI which stands for artificial general intelligence.

It is not clear which company or companies will play a role in developing technology that can challenge Nvidia the leader in high-end AI accelerators. There could be collaboration between Softbank and Arm Holdings, a chip design unit. Arm’s CEO Rene Haas is a member of the Board of Directors of SoftBank. He is also a technology expert. He has been advising Son on the project. They would like to focus on compute, power efficiency and energy to develop AGI.

There is a history of Son changing his mind abruptly, and he keeps on throwing many ideas and technologies while meeting people. Son is, however, unwavering in his enthusiasm for AGI. He is convinced that AGI will be real in 10 years.