SoftBank Vision Fund lost $32 billion in the financial year ending March as the Japanese investment giant, the most prolific global investor in tech startups, continues to suffer from valuation corrections across its portfolio of private and public tech companies amid a weakening global economy.

The loss surged 68% from the same period a year prior, when SoftBank had reported $19 billion in losses at the Vision Fund unit. The losses come even as SoftBank has grown very cautious about deploying new capital to startups in recent quarters.

Among the losses, the Japanese conglomerate said its Vision Fund 1 made an unrealized loss of $1.6 billion each in SenseTime Group and GoTo and nearly $800 million in DoorDash.

The fair value of SoftBank’s portfolio was marked down over the quarter by $2.3 billion to $138 billion.

“For private portfolio companies, the fair value decreased in a wide range of investments, mainly reflecting markdowns of weaker-performing companies and share price declines among market comparable companies,” SoftBank Group said in earnings report Thursday.

SoftBank chief finance officer Yoshimitsu Goto said earlier this year that the firm had entered “defence mode” and was preparing for three different scenarios. SoftBank anticipates that the market may either start to show recovery linearly this year, or by second half of this year, or in a worst-case scenario stumble through until early 2024.

The tumultuous times at SoftBank Vision Fund means a tough time for many of its portfolio startups, many of whom themselves are loss-making. SoftBank has served as a high-conviction growth investor for its portfolio startups, often leading or co-leading later, and often large, financing rounds.

SoftBank Vision Fund and Tiger Global escalated the pace of their dealmaking in 2021 as many investors believed that the rally in public stock markets would continue for the foreseeable future. But a sharp decline in the markets — accentuated by the Fed increasing interest rates and the unfolding of geopolitical events such as Russia invading Ukraine — has left many tech companies exposed with drops in business and shadows over their earnings forecasts, devaluing the businesses themselves, and leaving many investors scrambling to find ways to cut losses.

More to follow.

SoftBank Vision Fund yearly loss widens to $32B on startups valuation cut by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch