Softbank CEO says 'super AI' will arrive in 2035 and cost $9T

Video Masayoshi Son, the Japanese billionaire behind Softbank, has predicted that an artificial superintelligence 10,000 times smarter than a human brain will be created within about a decade - but at quite a cost.

Speaking at the Future Investment Initiative conference in Saudi Arabia, Son said that a scaled-up version of AI could add around 5 percent of global economic output by 2035, but it'll need a massive investment in chips and power.

For this reason Nvidia - currently the world's most valuable company, is undervalued - Son argued.

"I have predicted it would take 400GW of AI datacenter power, that's bigger than the total US electricity supply and it will require 200 million chips," he said, as you can see below. "The cumulative capex is $9 trillion - how do you recoup? It's too much investment for many people's view but I say it's still very reasonable capex. $9 trillion is not too big, maybe too small."

He opined that if the so-called super AI could produce around $9 trillion a year in benefits that initial investment would be "small money," and could be depreciated. He predicted four companies would make trillion-dollar profits, adding, as one might expected, that he wanted to be one of them.

While Son is all-in on AI, he's adjusting his timescale. In June he was predicting artificial superintelligence would be here in three to five years, saying that Arm - which Softbank owns a majority share of - would be one of the beneficiaries. But so will Nvidia, he predicted this week.

"I think Nvidia is undervalued because the future is much bigger," he suggested.

There are a few small problems along the way. Building a super AI would currently take colossal amounts of power and money - more than most governments could manage. And what if he's wrong? It has happened with Softbank before.

• OpenAI in talks with Jony Apple Ive and Softbank over iPhone-but-for-AI monster
• Fortunate Son: Softbank chief took 50 per cent pay cut in 2020, but that's not the worst of his worries
• Bill Gates says not to worry about AI gobbling up energy, tech will adapt
• Once Alibaba's main investor, SoftBank sheds remaining stake

It's worth pointing out the investment house poured billions into office-sharing biz WeWork, for example, only to see the value of the investment plummet after a bonkers pre-IPO statement by co-founder Adam Neumann caused first the offering to be called off, and then led to his resignation. Full disclosure: The Register in San Francisco still has a WeWork office, and if there are more than a dozen people on the entire floor of the Embarcadero building, we'd be very surprised.

So is Softbank about to take another bath? Son thinks not, and the multi-billionaire says he's saving up to cover the costs of building the new super AI of the future. And when one of the richest people in the world with a net worth of around $16 billion tells you they're saving, it's a good indicator that the costs of such a scheme are going to be massive. ®