SoftBank launches the Innovation Fund, committing $2B to invest in Latin America

While SoftBank continues to make big bets on startups out of its $100-billion Vision Fund, it has also launched another investment vehicle to invest in tech opportunities specifically in Latin America.Today the group announced the SoftBank Innovation Fund, which is starting out with a $2 billion commitment to invest in tech startups in Central and South America, specifically starting in the countries of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico, covering areas like e-commerce, digital financial services, healthcare, mobility and insurance.Alongside this, it’s establishing a group called the SoftBank Latin America Local Hub, which will partner with companies that are already in SoftBank’s investment portfolio to help them break into the region.The effort in Latin America is a big win for Marcelo Claure, who has been named CEO of SoftBank Latin America. The SoftBank Innovation Fund will become a major investor in transformative Latin American companies that are poised to redefine their industries and create new economic opportunities for millions of people.”This is the first time that SoftBank has created a fund of this kind focused on a single region — although it has spearheaded big bets into specific countries like India in the past — and it appears to the be first time that it has formally established a group to help other portfolio companies expand in a region, although this is likely something that SoftBank would have been doing on an informal basis before now.News of the this fund had been trickling out for some time, although a report in Bloomberg from January that broke the news had underestimated the amount that SoftBank would invest in it (it predicted $1 billion, while the actual starting amount is $2 billion).SoftBank says that it has yet to determine where it will establish its HQ for this new effort.