SoftBank Vision Fund’s Praveen Akkiraju Is Stepping Down

(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Vision Fund managing partner Praveen Akkiraju is stepping down from the behemoth investment vehicle to explore working with early stage startups in either an operational or investment role.

Akkiraju joined SoftBank in April 2018 and was previously the chief executive officer of Viptela, a cloud software company that was acquired by Cisco Systems Inc. His departure was confirmed by a Vision Fund spokeswoman.

Axios earlier reported Akkiraju’s exit. The outlet noted that Deep Nishar, a senior managing partner, will assume many of Akkiraju’s responsibilities including his board seat at Automation Anywhere. SoftBank’s Vision Fund invested $300 million in the San Jose, California-based robotic process automation company last November.

SoftBank has raised roughly $2 billion for its second Vision Fund so it can start making new investments, people familiar with the matter said last month.

Akkiraju’s departure follows the resignation of London-based Vision Fund partner David Thevenon.

Akkiraju didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Updates with second Vision Fund details. A previous version of this story corrected the size of first fund in story link.)

To contact the reporters on this story: Giles Turner in London at gturner35@bloomberg.net;Gillian Tan in New York at gtan129@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Alan Goldstein at agoldstein5@bloomberg.net, Robin Ajello, Jillian Ward

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