SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434) held its 37th Annual General Meeting of Shareholders (AGM) on June 20, 2023, at Tokyo International Forum. President & CEO Junichi Miyakawa chaired the meeting, which was attended by approximately 750 shareholders, including 360 who participated online. After explaining SoftBank’s business progress, strategy and answering 37 shareholder questions, all four AGM proposals were approved.
Aiming to be the company that utilizes generative AI the most skillfully
After showing a video that reviewed SoftBank’s business results for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2023 (FY2022), Miyakawa presented SoftBank’s business strategy.
Miyakawa noted that SoftBank will continue to place priority on both high shareholder returns and growth over the mid- to long-term, including a record-high target of 535.0 billion JPY in net income for FY2025.
Speaking on initiatives to achieve further growth, Miyakawa emphasized the role of AI in SoftBank’s long-term goal to become a provider of next-generation infrastructure. He explained that AI can be used to reduce traffic accidents and guide robots to do housework, but computing capacity must be greatly increased to process exponentially growing amounts of data.
To address this issue, SoftBank is working to build super-distributed computing infrastructure evenly across Japan’s regions to rebalance the heavy concentration of data processing and power consumption in urban areas.
Miyakawa also noted that SoftBank is collaborating with NVIDIA to introduce advanced chips at data centers. This will make it possible to incorporate AI into radio access networks to optimize mobile network connectivity and prevent “packet loss,” an issue that occurs when data delivery is delayed due to sudden crowding, for example.
“We’re just at the beginning of our AI journey,” Miyakawa said, noting that AI will “fundamentally transform social infrastructure.”
AI was also a dominant theme among the questions from shareholders. Asked if SoftBank is utilizing generative AI, Miyakawa noted that he and employees are actively utilizing platforms such as the Azure OpenAI Service, which can be used in a secure environment.
“We’re aiming to be the company that uses generative AI the most skillfully, and we’re sharing this goal with our employees. We’ll announce further generative AI developments in the future,” he added.
A video, resolution materials and more information on SoftBank’s 37th AGM can be found here.
(Updated on June 22, 2023)
by SoftBank News Editors
