How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm • Hacker News Board

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#21

Post by paxys » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:01 AM UTC

dannykwells wrote: post #6

Can anyone tell me an example where Softbank has been spectacularly correct in the past few years? We all know the failures - are there any major success in their portfolio? Or is it all meh?

https://visionfund.com/portfolio

ByteDance, Grab, Ola, Uber, Opendoor, Slack, DoorDash, Didi, Coupang were/are all great bets.

According to CrunchBase (https://news.crunchbase.com/news/softbank-vision-fund-strate...), as of March 31, 2021 Vision Fund 1 was worth $146.5 billion from $86.2 billion in initial investment. I don't know enough about the space to judge whether that is considered good enough or not.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#22

Post by achow » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:04 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #21

dannykwells wrote: post #6

Can anyone tell me an example where Softbank has been spectacularly correct in the past few years? We all know the failures - are there any major success in their portfolio? Or is it all meh?

https://visionfund.com/portfolio ByteDance, Grab, Ola, Uber, Opendoor, Slack, DoorDash, Didi, Coupang were/are all great bets. According to CrunchBase ( https://news.crunchbase.com/news/softbank-vision-fund-strate... ), as of March 31, 2021 Vision Fund 1 was worth $146.5 billion from $86.2 billion in initial investment. I don't know enough about the space to judge whether that is considered good enough or not.

Yahoo, Alibaba?

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#23

Post by vhimnv » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:06 AM UTC

frozenport wrote: post #19

This article is garbage. Dude bought ARM at 31bn and was going to flip it for 66bn until anti-trust regulators intervened. SoftBank did nothing wrong, other than accept the risk of regulatory intervention.

He pushed the company in the wrong direction. The company could've been worth a lot more if it hadn't been investing in IoT nonsense.

Sure, the valuation went from 33 to 66bn, but could've done a lot better. Just because you made money doesn't mean you didn't do something stupid.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#24

Post by paxys » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

achow wrote: post #22

paxys wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://visionfund.com/portfolio ByteDance, Grab, Ola, Uber, Opendoor, Slack, DoorDash, Didi, Coupang were/are all great bets. According to CrunchBase ( https://news.crunchbase.com/news/softbank-vision-fund-strate... ), as of March 31, 2021 Vision Fund 1 was worth $146.5 billion from $86.2 billion in initial investment. I don't know enough about the space to judge whether that is considered good enough or not.

Yahoo, Alibaba?

That did not happen "in the past few years"

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#25

Post by achow » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

How it 'backfired', if it is going to do an IPO? Post IPO its market value could be much higher than acquisition price of $31B.

Failure to sell to Nvidia at 2X the acquisition price is not a failure, it was an honest attempt to make a profit.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#26

Post by achow » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:10 AM UTC

paxys wrote: post #24

achow wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo, Alibaba?

That did not happen "in the past few years"

Question was "are there any major success in their portfolio?", time period was not specified.

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#27

Post by paxys » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:16 AM UTC

achow wrote: post #26

paxys wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That did not happen "in the past few years"

Question was "are there any major success in their portfolio?", time period was not specified.

Maybe you want to read the comment again?

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#28

Post by perfopt » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:21 AM UTC

achow wrote: post #25

How it 'backfired', if it is going to do an IPO? Post IPO its market value could be much higher than acquisition price of $31B. Failure to sell to Nvidia at 2X the acquisition price is not a failure, it was an honest attempt to make a profit.

Correct. Here "backfired" is the investment did not make 10x return

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#29

Post by perfopt » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:24 AM UTC

threshold wrote: post #16

I always thought IoT was a stupid idea. From day 1 it sounded pointless and unprofitable.

It is not a stupid idea. Most companies cannot make too much money from designing/selling the hardware. On the other hand there is money to be made from the data collected from these IoTs and selling device management and updates as a service.

ARM is just not the right company to make that happen. They are fantastic at what they do but not software services, big data, etc

Re: How SoftBank’s costly bet on the ‘internet of things’ backfired at Arm

#30

Post by perfopt » Tue, Feb 15, 2022, 4:26 AM UTC

frozenport wrote: post #19

This article is garbage. Dude bought ARM at 31bn and was going to flip it for 66bn until anti-trust regulators intervened. SoftBank did nothing wrong, other than accept the risk of regulatory intervention.

He made a bad decision in pushing ARM to chase IoT. Instead he could have pushed more in traditional areas - servers, data centers, laptops and desktops. Some of that did happen but more could have been done if they had not been distracted by IoT.