Masayoshi Son

Masayoshi Son is the founder, chairman, and CEO of SoftBank Group, one of the world's most influential technology investment companies, and a visionary whose bold bets on the future of technology have reshaped entire industries. His audacious investment style, willingness to think in 300-year timeframes, and genuine belief that technology will solve humanity's greatest challenges have made him one of the most fascinating and impactful business leaders of the modern era. From his early investment in Alibaba to the creation of the Vision Fund, Son has consistently demonstrated an ability to see the future before others.

Born in Japan to ethnic Korean parents, Son overcame significant social challenges to become one of the world's most successful entrepreneurs. He moved to the United States at age 16, studied at UC Berkeley, and was deeply inspired by the potential of microprocessors after reading about them in a magazine. He returned to Japan and founded SoftBank in 1981, initially as a software distribution company. Through relentless ambition and an extraordinary ability to identify transformative technology trends, he built SoftBank into a global technology conglomerate with investments in hundreds of the world's most innovative companies.

Son's $20 million investment in Alibaba in 2000 — which grew to be worth over $100 billion — stands as one of the most successful venture investments in history. His creation of the $100 billion Vision Fund in 2017 was equally audacious, establishing the largest technology investment fund ever assembled and providing capital to hundreds of ambitious startups working on artificial intelligence, transportation, healthcare, and other frontier technologies. Son's unwavering optimism about technology's potential to improve human life and his willingness to make massive bets on that belief have made him a singular figure in global business.

Masayoshi Son was born in 1957 on the island of Kyushu, Japan, to an ethnic Korean family. Growing up as a member of Japan's Korean minority, he faced discrimination and economic hardship — his family initially lived in a shack near railroad tracks in a community of Korean immigrants. Despite these challenges, Son was extraordinarily ambitious from a young age. At 16, he moved to the United States alone to attend high school in San Francisco, and he went on to study economics and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. While still a student, he generated his first significant income by importing early handheld electronic translators from Japan and licensing a voice synthesizer patent to Sharp Corporation for $1.7 million. After graduating, he returned to Japan and founded SoftBank in 1981 at age 24, initially as a software distribution company. He famously told his first two employees that within five years the company would have $75 million in sales — a claim so outlandish that both employees soon quit.