Japan's telecom and internet giant SoftBank seems to be having a couple of busy news days. It was only yesterday that we had reported how Paytm—India’s largest digital payments startup, had raised a whopping $1.4 billion from the SoftBank Group in what could be seen as the largest funding round from a single investor for any Indian technology startup. And now comes the news, that the group itself has successfully raised $1 billion from Japan-based electronics company Sharp Corp for its ambitious $100 billion Vision fund and that aims to tap advanced technologies through the investment.

Being considered as the largest fund of its kind in the world, SoftBank announced its 'Vision' Tech Fund in October last year. During its big announcement, the Japanese giant had said that the $100 billion fund would be based in London and made up of $45 billion from Saudi Arabia, $25 billion from SoftBank, and $35 billion from other global investors.

Talking about its latest investment, Sharp said that it decided to participate in SoftBank's Tech fund because, by participating in a fund of this kind, it expects to capture an opportunity to learn about the internet of things space, which will in turn enable Sharp to accelerate its business expansion as an IoT company.

In addition to Sharp, other corporate biggies that have expressed their interest in investing in the fund include Qualcomm, Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and Apple. In fact, Taiwan's Foxconn, the parent of Sharp also intends to invest in the fund.

Late last year, SoftBank's highly celebrated chairman and CEO, Masayoshi Son announced that that the company would be investing 50 per cent of the $100 billion fund into US technology companies.

In fact, Son has even met the newly elected US president Donald Trump and personally told him about the company's plans of creating 50,000 new jobs in the US as a result of the SoftBank's investment activities in the country. After the meeting, the POTUS even took to the Twitter to share his joy about the 50,000 new jobs that SoftBank and Son had promised. Reportedly, Son will be Riyadh during Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia this weekend.

Earlier this year, SoftBank brought in Akshay Naheta, founder and chief investment officer of London-based investment fund Knight Assets to help manage its new $100 billion (£82 billion) tech fund.

[Top Image: Financial Times]
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