SoftBank’s tech investment funds lose £71 million in the third quarter.
The tech investment giant SoftBank’s venture capital arm lost money again last quarter, this time by £71 million.
The Vision Funds, which have invested in British tech companies like Zopa and Revolut, lost less than the $20 billion it bled out in the first quarter of last year, but the total loss of the funds is now £5.7 billion.
The Japanese business group lost a total of £2.6bn across all its companies.
The Vision Funds’ results come after a string of bad ones from the tech investment vehicles, which lost a record amount of money ($25,4bn) last year.
SoftBank has been protecting itself for the past two years. Because it put a lot of money into tech startups during the bull run, when valuations were much higher, it was hit hard by the economic slowdown, bringing tech valuations down to earth.
The company wants to start spending again, even though its funds have lost money.
“We are slowly and carefully moving back to investment activities,” said CFO Yoshimitsu Goto at the investor presentation. The head of finance said that AI would continue to be a big focus for the group.
SoftBank is still in the process of putting Arm on the stock market. Arm could go public in New York as soon as September.
Arm wants to be worth more than £50bn when it goes public. It is one of the most valuable tech companies in the UK.
