<story><title>SoftBank CEO says Khashoggi killing may have impact on Saudi-backed Vision Fund</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/05/softbank-ceo-masayoshi-son-breaks-silence-on-death-of-saudi-journalist.html?yptr=yahoo</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text>This is going to be interesting. Until recently, SoftBank was thought of as being a Japanese operation. Now they seem to be a front for Saudi Arabia&amp;#x27;s sovereign wealth fund.&lt;p&gt;They seem to be the world&amp;#x27;s largest source of dumb money. They keep Uber afloat. $375M for a pizza making robot company. WeWork. Cruise. $300 million in Wag, a dog-walking company. They do have big stakes in ARM and NVidia, which actually make useful stuff profitably.  But the investments in the last two years have been strange.&lt;p&gt;The goal may not be profitability, but influence. The Cruise investment gives them some pull at GM. The WeWork investment gives them some pull in the US real estate market. The Uber investment lets them influence the future of transportation. Those all make strategic sense for an oil power. Someone there likes robots; they bought most of the robot companies Google dumped, plus a few others.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.recode.net&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;2&amp;#x2F;5&amp;#x2F;16974032&amp;#x2F;this-is-where-chart-softbank-vision-fund-masayoshi-son-venture-capital&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.recode.net&amp;#x2F;2018&amp;#x2F;2&amp;#x2F;5&amp;#x2F;16974032&amp;#x2F;this-is-where-chart...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>SoftBank CEO says Khashoggi killing may have impact on Saudi-backed Vision Fund</title><url>https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/05/softbank-ceo-masayoshi-son-breaks-silence-on-death-of-saudi-journalist.html?yptr=yahoo</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>crwalker</author><text>Weak. SoftBank has always seemed suspiciously large and cavalier. I expect there&amp;#x27;s a venture analog to the expression &amp;quot;there are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.&amp;quot; Let&amp;#x27;s hope they stick the WeWork landing ...</text></comment>