The Japanese conglomerate’s Vision Fund walked away from three San Francisco-based startups after the fund submitted term sheets worth hundreds of millions of dollars and promised that closing delays were only temporary. (Axios)

Talking point: SoftBank’s original US$100-billion Vision Fund spent about US$80 billion in less than three years. It had planned to raise $108 billion for its Vision Fund 2. The decision to pull away from investments comes as CEO Masayoshi Son is reportedly refocusing the fund’s investment strategy on profitability over growth in the wake of WeWork’s cancelled 2019 IPO. The Vision Fund had previously invested about US$10.6 billion in the co-working space company and provided another US$9.5 billion for a rescue funds in October 2019. Among the startups reportedly affected by the decision home-care startup Honor, B2B sales software startup Seismic, and food prep robotics company Creator. According to Axios, Honor received a SoftBank term sheet in November in a deal worth US$150 million. SoftBank said it needed some time for standard due diligence, and then abruptly pulled the deal in late December. Similar deals died for Seismic and Creator.