Masayoshi Son predicts that human driving will be replaced by autonomous driving within 50 years, and SoftBank is making all-round arrangements for autonomous driving

On the 19th of last month, Son Masayoshi predicted at SoftBank's annual meeting: "In less than 50 years, people will no longer be allowed to drive themselves in cities or on highways unless they have a special license. Because drivers may cause traffic jams and accidents."

Before Masayoshi Son came to his conclusion, SoftBank had already begun to comprehensively lay out the autonomous driving industry.

According to Pitchbook data, there were 69 investments in autonomous driving in 2017, totaling more than $4 billion, while in 2016, there were only 34 investment transactions with a total value of $626 million.

Self-driving cars have specific software and hardware technology requirements. The hardware involves AI chips and sensors, including cameras, millimeter-wave radars, and lidars. The related software technologies involve high-precision maps, algorithms, and Internet of Vehicles technologies.

In the field of AI chips, SoftBank successfully acquired approximately US$4 billion worth of Nvidia's shares last year and transferred them to its Vision Fund.

Nvidia already has an in-vehicle chip that is called the "brain" of autonomous driving, and has partnered with Bosch to create an autonomous driving platform with performance sufficient to meet Level 5 requirements.

Masayoshi Son believes that the most valuable aspect of Light's precision cameras in the future is autonomous driving. In Son's view, Light can be seen as a potential substitute for LiDAR. Therefore, Light received a $121 million investment from SoftBank.

SoftBank has also invested in LiDAR, the most typical of which is the Israeli startup Innoviz. SoftBank led its Series B round of financing, and Innoviz's first product is a high-definition solid-state LiDAR.

In terms of software, SoftBank's Vision Fund led a $164 million Series C round for map company Mapbox. Today, Mapbox collects more than 200 million miles of anonymous sensor data every day and processes it in real time to update maps in real time.

In the field of intelligent algorithms, SoftBank has set its sights on Nauto, a startup focused on autonomous driving data collection and related software development. At the same time, Brain Crop, a company that develops robot automatic navigation technology, has also received a total investment of US$141 million from SoftBank and Qualcomm.

Masayoshi Son has always believed that machines will become smarter than people, which is also called the "singularity", and this will also be the case in the field of driving. This is why he boldly predicted at this year's SoftBank Annual Meeting that human-driven cars will gradually disappear within 50 years.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.