SoftBank Group Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son is looking to raise up to $100 billion for a chip venture that will rival Nvidia Corp, the Bloomberg News has reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.

The project, code-named Izanagi, will supply semiconductors essential for artificial intelligence (AI), the report adds.

The company will inject $30 billion in the project, with an additional $70 billion potentially coming from Middle-Eastern institutions.

The Japanese group already holds about a 90 per cent stake in British chip designer Arm.

SoftBank CFO Yoshimitsu Goto had said earlier this month that Arm would soon be indispensable to AI and has previously called the chip designer “the core of the core” of SoftBank’s group of companies.

Arm executives had said earlier this month that the company was seeing strong demand for its central processors to complement Nvidia’s chips for AI work in data centres.

SoftBank is known for its tech investments with high conviction bets on startups at an unheard of scale.

But it had adopted a defensive strategy after being hit by plummeting valuations in the aftermath of the pandemic, when higher interest rates eroded investors’ appetite for risk.

It returned to profit for the first time in five quarters earlier this month, as the Japanese tech investment firm was buoyed by an upturn in portfolio companies.