Empire of the rising Son
With his $110 billion SoftBank empire and his $100 billion SoftBank Vision Fund.
nMasayoshi Son is one of the biggest forces in global tech.
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Born in 1957 to a poor Korean immigrant family in rural Japan, he faced constant discrimination. Young Son developed a rebellious attitude.
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At 16, he moved to San Francisco for high school, and later majored in economics at UC Berkeley.
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At 19, the microchip-obssessed student designed a multilingual translator gadget. It was sold to electronics firm Sharp for about $1 million.
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Back in Japan, Son started SoftBank at the age of 23. Starting with a mix of publishing and PC software distribution, he later transformed it into a telco.
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The CEO took SoftBank public in 1994, valuing the firm at $3 billion. Son first made global headlines in 1999 as the dot-com bubble put him among the world’s richest people.
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Just before the crash, his net worth was going up $10 billion each week. For three days, he was the richest person on the planet. But the bubble popped, erasing nearly all of his worth as SoftBank almost went bankrupt.
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In 2005, Son secured a meeting with Apple’s Steve Jobs, showing Jobs a rough drawing of an Apple phone inspired by the popular iPod. That was two years before Jobs unveiled the iPhone.
nJobs: “Masa, don’t give me your drawing. I have my own.”
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Son didn’t have a mobile telco service at the time, but Jobs still agreed to give Apple’s upcoming phone to Son as a Japan exclusive deal. Son moved into the mobile carrier business a year later with the acquisition of Vodafone’s Japan unit.
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Well, Masa, you are crazy. We have not talked to anybody, but you came to see me first. I’ll give it to you.
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Son is known for his investment acumen. Before the 2000 bubble popped, he’d already invested $1.7 billion in over 100 internet companies, including Yahoo and stock-trading site E-trade.
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His strategy: make early bets in a wide array of startups, then follow up with sizable stakes in the top performers.
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That’s how he got huge chunks of so many tech giants.
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In 2014, Son invested in Uber rival Grab. In his Tokyo office, he said to Grab’s Anthony Tan:
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If you take my money, good for me, good for you. If you don’t take my money, not so good for you.
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In 2016, Son invested in chipmaker ARM.
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“I buy at the beginning of paradigm shifts. We are at that moment now with internet of things.”
nHe is obsessed with robots and AI.
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Saudi Arabia’s state Public Investment Fund is the biggest investor in the Vision Fund:
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He shocked the tech industry in 2016 by bringing together massive banks and investors to raise $100 billion for Vision fund, the world’s largest investment vehicle.
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The move made Son a major power broker in global tech.
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The Vision Fund has made around 60 huge bets so far.
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Sources: Tech in Asia, Financial Express, Bloomberg, CNBC, Crunchbase, TechCrunch, Apple Insider, Recode, Forbes