SoftBank takes the brakes off Vision Fund with $22bn bet
Chief Masayoshi Son s second Vision Fund has made 64 investments already so far this year
The second Vision Fund has been involved in $21.9bn of deals this year
Credit: KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP
Phil Libin wasn’t looking for investors. His video app, mmhmm , had raised $31m (£23m) just a few months earlier, enough for the Silicon Valley company to operate for the next two years. But when SoftBank discovered that venture capital funds had started to offer the year-old company more cash, it refused to be left out.
Within two days, Libin was remotely demonstrating his software to Masayoshi Son in Tokyo, and soon after, he was handed a term sheet. Earlier this month, SoftBank’s Vision Fund led a $100m funding round for mmhmm, more than three times what it had received in October.