Masayoshi Son
Founder and CEO, SoftBank
The largest technology bets ever placed, in both directions
Rating
82Impact score
Domains
InvestmentTelecomsSemiconductors
Scouting report
Built SoftBank from software distribution into a telecoms operator and then the most consequential technology investor alive. An early stake in Alibaba, bought for around $20 million, returned tens of billions. He acquired Arm, whose instruction set is in essentially every phone on earth, for about $32 billion in 2016, and launched the $100 billion Vision Fund, which then produced WeWork.
Curator’s note
Nobody has been spectacularly right and spectacularly wrong at this scale.
Portrait
Painted from a photograph of Masayoshi Son by European Communities, 2025 / EC - Audiovisual Service, licensed CC BY 4.0.
Sources
- 01Masayoshi Son en.wikipedia.org
- 02SoftBank Vision Fund en.wikipedia.org