In light of the excitement surrounding developments in artificial intelligence, SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son announced on Wednesday that his tech investing conglomerate intends to change its posture and go into “offence mode.”

The group had taken a defensive position and was reducing investment activities as its investing arm, the Vision Fund, recorded significant investment losses.

“The time has come to shift to offence mode,” Son told shareholders at the group’s annual general meeting.

For the fiscal year that concluded on March 31, SoftBank reported a net loss of 970 billion yen ($6.85 billion), offsetting losses at the Vision Fund division by decreasing its share in Alibaba.

Yoshimitsu Goto, the group’s chief financial officer, stated last month that the organisation is adjusting its prior concentration on defence and wants to make sure it does not miss investment possibilities.

The amount of cash, cash equivalents, and undrawn commitment lines in SoftBank’s liquid assets increased to 5.1 trillion yen at the end of March from 2.9 trillion yen a year earlier.

Son, who has backed off from making public statements recently, devoted a large portion of his talk on Wednesday to discussing his enthusiasm for AI.

Son claimed that he requested new adventures for Astro Boy, the venerable manga series by Tezuka Osamu, from ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot from the startup OpenAI.

“It creates as if it was human,” he said.

The billionaire claimed that he has been working on technologies for the past eight months that he hopes will be realised by Arm, the conglomerate’s chip designer.

“We want to bring these inventions to fruition step by step. Arm is the key,” he said.

According to Reuters, SoftBank plans to float Arm on Nasdaq later this year and is looking to raise between $8 billion and $10 billion. Arm is in discussions with businesses, including Intel, about future IPO participation.

Shares of SoftBank finished up 3.7%, bringing their year-to-date gain to 22.9%.

Observers question Son’s ability to predict winners in an economy that is predicted to be more driven by AI after he made high-profile mistakes like supporting the office-sharing company WeWork.

Son claimed that while some of his portfolio firms have failed, he still believes that enough of them would be successful in an AI-driven future.

“If you have one or two out of a hundred smash hit, that will pay back everything,” Son said.

“I think at least I have found more than several of them … I think that’s enough.”

(Adapted from CNBC.com)