Masayoshi Son

Masayoshi Son is the bold Japanese entrepreneur who founded SoftBank Group in 1981, though he and SoftBank are far better known for their ambitious bets on other companies. Son’s most famous investment was SoftBank’s $20 million bet on Alibaba in 2000, which produced a $72 billion return before SoftBank sold most of its stake in 2023. Other deals, however, haven’t done so well. In 2017, Son launched the $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund, which sank billions into WeWork before the coworking startup filed for bankruptcy in 2023. Then there was Nvidia. In 2019, SoftBank sold its shares in the chipmaker, missing out on the huge shareholder gains that came with the current AI boom. Had SoftBank held on to the stock, its holdings would have been worth over $160 billion, Fortune reported in June 2024. Son and SoftBank seem to have righted themselves a bit. SoftBank was part of OpenAI’s $40 billion fundraise earlier this year. The venture firm still controls Arm, the chip design company that went public in late 2023. In March, SoftBank scooped up chipmaker Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion, and in May, SoftBank reported its first annual profit in four years.