Buyer of $2bn SoftBank fund plans nimbler venture capital for AI era

TOKYO — The head of the successor to SoftBank Group’s $2 billion fund focused on Asia says venture capitalists must change the way they fund startups, since the ones that use artificial intelligence can scale up much faster than currently assumed.

Taizo Son, the co-founder of The Edgeof, a Singapore-based venture capital company, told Nikkei Asia that currently it is “structurally difficult” for venture capital funds to satisfy the fast growth and huge funding needs of AI companies. Some AI startups will expand “in an exponential manner” rather than gradually, since they will not be limited by staff numbers, he said.