SoftBank Group chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son on Wednesday stated that the Japanese funding agency plans to shift from “protection mode” to “offense mode” and needs to capitalize on the AI revolution.

“Now, the time has come to shift to offense mode,” Son stated throughout a shareholders’ annual basic assembly.

“Up to now few years, we centered on being [on] ‘protection.’ Three years in the past, we did not have a variety of money available. However as a result of we’ve got been in protection mode, we’ve got constructed our money available to 5 trillion yen ($35.3 billion),” Son stated.

“We’re able to shift to offense mode. I’m enthusiastic about that,” stated Son.

The tech conglomerate, which engages in enterprise capital investing by way of its Imaginative and prescient Fund, has had its fair proportion of ups and downs. It was in “protection mode” because it halted new investments and trimmed its stake in Alibaba. In Could, the Imaginative and prescient Fund reported a report $32 billion loss.

“What I’m eager about most, what I’m engaged on most, is the AI revolution. I imagine that mankind goes to be exceeded by pc or AI,” stated Son.

“We wish to be [in] the main place for the AI revolution,” stated Son.

SoftBank shares rose 2.63% in Wednesday morning commerce.

The Imaginative and prescient Fund has invested in Chinese language tech companies and subsequently was hit by Beijing’s crackdown on the nation’s tech sector and the following plunge in share costs. SoftBank’s portfolio corporations embody ByteDance, DiDi Grocery, Coupang and extra.

SoftBank is gearing up for the IPO of Arm, the U.Ok.-based chip design agency it acquired in 2016. Arm filed for the itemizing within the U.S. SoftBank’s CFO Yoshimitsu Goto stated the IPO course of is “going easily.”

Synthetic intelligence has seen explosive development in latest months, fueled by chatbot ChatGPT’s virality. ChatGPT has amazed researchers and most of the people with its means to generate humanlike responses to customers’ prompts.

Son stated on Tuesday that he’s “a heavy consumer of ChatGPT” and that ChatGPT is “superb.”