SoftBank to lead nearly $1.2 billion investment in diagnostics firm Invitae

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has been expanding his investments in publicly traded companies in recent months, including in Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc.

SoftBank Group Corp. led an investment of $1.15 billion in genetic-testing company Invitae Corp. to help expand the use of its platform.

The funding will be in the form of convertible debt, Invitae said in a statement Monday. The convertible senior notes due in 2028 will have an initial conversion price of $43.18 per share, a 20% premium to the company’s trailing volume-weighted five-day average price as of April 1, according to the company. San Francisco-based Invitae’s shares have tripled in the past 12 months and closed Thursday at $39.19 in U.S. trading, pushing its market valuation to $7.7 billion. The