SoftBank Grants $5 Billion Fund for Latin American Tech Firms
Shweta Dabholkar,
5 years ago
2 min read
In the latest finance news, Japanese Group SoftBank Corp has launched a new $5 billion fund. The generous fund will make sizable investments in Latin American technology companies. Read on to know more about the SoftBank Innovation Fund.
About the SoftBank Innovation Fund
Recently, SoftBank announced its fund that would initially commit $2 billion to tech startup investments in South and Central America. This would specifically include countries such as Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Mexico and Columbia. The startups would belong to the industry categories such as healthcare, financial services, and e-commerce to insurance and mobility, among others.
SoftBank already has a Saudi Arabia-backed $100 billion investment vehicle called the Softbank Vision Fund. Till date, it has made sizable investments in companies such as Uber Technologies Inc, WeWork, DoorDash as well as a dog walking app called Wag.
Significant Opportunities in Latin America
Besides the SoftBank Innovation Fund, the financial giant is also establishing a group that will be called the SoftBank Latin America Local Hub. It would be responsible for creating partnerships with companies that are already present in the investment portfolio of SoftBank in order to help them enter the region.
Bolivian native Marcelo Claure has been named the CEO of SoftBank Latin America. He is already the COO of SoftBank Group Corp. in addition to being the executive chairman of Sprint Corporation and the CEO of SoftBank Group International.
The Future of Latin American Tech
As of now, the size of the fund is unprecedented in Latin America because it totals the combined investments of venture capitalists in 2017 and 2018. The chairman and CEO of SoftBank, Masayoshi San claimed that “Latin America is on the cusp of becoming one of the most important economic regions in the world, and we anticipate significant growth in the decades ahead.”
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This is the first time SoftBank has created a fund of this magnitude that will be focused solely on one region. The finance conglomerate is yet to determine where the headquarters for this new effort will be located.
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