SoftBank (SFTBF) is set to lead a $500 million investing round in artificial intelligence robotics start-up Skild AI, in a move that could value the company at $4 billion as boss Masayoshi Son seeks to achieve his ambitious goals in the AI space.
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It would mark a major increase from the $1.5 billion valuation achieved in its last funding round in 2024, though sources told Bloomberg and the Financial Times that talks were in the early stages.
SoftBank has high ambitions in AI and last week said it would launch a $500 billion AI infrastructure project with Oracle (ORCL) and OpenAI, in which the Japanese investor has a large stake. And speaking at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago last month, Son said the company would invest $100 billion in the U.S. over the next four years.
But recent moves by China’s DeepSeek have undercut assumptions about the level of investment being made by Western tech firms and the amount of funding being raised by some startups.
Last July, Skild AI raised $300 million in Series A funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Coatue, SoftBank Group, and Amazon (AMZN) founder Jeff Bezos. This investment also drew interest from Felicis Ventures, Sequoia, Menlo Ventures, General Catalyst, CRV, SV Angel, Carnegie Mellon University, and the Amazon Industrial Innovation Fund & the Alexa Fund.
Skild AI Compared to OpenAI
Son’s ambitions in AI are finding a home at Skild AI, which is working on a scalable foundation model to act as a “shared, general-purpose brain” for different robots.
Investors have compared the company to achieving the kind of breakthrough achieved by OpenAI.
“A GPT-3 moment is coming to the world of robotics,” said Stephanie Zhan, a partner at Sequoia Capital, which took part in the first funding round.
This, she argued, will spark a “monumental shift,” where the kind of advancements in the digital world are brought to the physical world.
“Since partnering with Skild AI at the seed round, I have deep conviction that they are the team to pursue one of the most ambitious visions of our era,” Zhan added.
Is SoftBank a Good Stock to Buy?
Overall, Wall Street has a Moderate Buy consensus rating on SoftBank, based on three Buys and three Holds. The average SFTBF price target of $77.48 implies 27% upside from the current levels, with the stock having risen 38% in the last year.
