Microsoft is in talks with SoftBank about investing in the Japanese tech conglomerate's massive investment fund, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday.
The second so-called Vision Fund that SoftBank is in process of raising is likely to be around $40 billion, according to the report. SoftBank has already signed on a broad mix of investing partners to back the fund, including Apple and investment bank Goldman Sachs, the WSJ said.
Apple was already an investor in SoftBank's first $100 billion Vision Fund, which has invested in dozens of tech startups in AI, ecommerce and sharing economy services.
To entice Microsoft to join its second VisionFund, SoftBank offered to persuade its 75 existing portfolio companies to move their operations from the Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure to Microsoft's Azure cloud, according to the WSJ report.
Both Microsoft and SoftBank declined to comment.
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The report comes as the Department of Justice is expected to approve T-Mobile's purchase of Sprint, which would offload a significant portion of SoftBank's debt in the mobile phone provider and free up cash for this second Vision Fund, according to the report.
SoftBank's first Vision Fund backed some of the biggest names in tech like recently public Uber, and Slack, and soon-to-be-public WeWork. Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son led the $100 billion fund since its launch in 2017.
