How a high-stakes gambler became the architect of the global artificial intelligence infrastructure revolution.
Masayoshi Son has lived a life of extreme financial volatility, once holding the record for the largest personal wealth loss in history. Today, the SoftBank founder is pivoting his massive investment empire toward artificial intelligence, betting that his strategic focus on semiconductors and data centers will define the future.
Born in 1957 to a Zainichi Korean family in Japan, Masayoshi Son moved to California at age 16 to pursue education, eventually graduating from UC Berkeley. His early business success included selling an electronic translator to Sharp Corporation for $1.7 million and importing video game machines. In 1981, he founded SoftBank, which evolved from a software distributor into a global investment powerhouse. His early $20 million stake in Alibaba in 1999 became a legendary success, though he famously missed early opportunities to invest in Amazon and Tesla.
Son’s career is defined by extreme risk. During the 2000 dot-com crash, his personal wealth plummeted by over $59 billion, a record loss for the time. Undeterred, he launched the $100 billion Vision Fund in 2017 to back AI and robotics. While the fund faced scrutiny for high-profile failures like WeWork and Greensill Capital, and Son personally owed SoftBank $5.1 billion by early 2023 due to side-deal losses, he has remained resilient. By 2025, SoftBank reported a return to profitability, driven by valuation gains in AI-linked holdings.
Today, Son is repositioning SoftBank as an AI infrastructure leader. In 2025, he was appointed chairman of Stargate LLC, an AI infrastructure joint venture involving OpenAI and Oracle. His strategy centers on Arm Holdings, the chip designer SoftBank acquired for approximately £24 billion in 2016. As of June 2026, a surge in market value briefly made Son the richest person in Asia, underscoring the high-stakes nature of his latest pivot. Whether through massive solar projects or the Stargate initiative, Son continues to operate as a singular, polarizing force in global technology finance.
Source: Masayoshi Son
