Masayoshi Son

Masayoshi Son is the bold Japanese entrepreneur who founded SoftBank Group in 1981, but 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 last year. 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 co-working 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 the stock, its holdings would have been worth over $160 billion, Fortune reported in June. This year, Son and SoftBank seemed to have righted themselves a bit. SoftBank was part of OpenAI’s recent $6.6 billion fundraise. Arm, the semiconductor designer backed by SoftBank, went public in late 2023, and its shares have since nearly tripled from their IPO price of $51.