Masayoshi Son

Masayoshi Son (孫 正義, 손정의; born 11 August 1957) is a Japanese billionaire technology entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist.

As an entrepreneur, he achieved notability in PC software distribution, computing-related book and magazine publishing, and telecommunications in Japan, starting in the 1980s and booming throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

Poor investment decisions of Masayoshi Son's SoftBank Group led to a panoply of losing investments across the history of the company.

Son graduated from Berkeley with a B.A. in Economics in 1980, and started a video game company called Unison World in Oakland, CA. He later sold the company to an associate for close to $2 million, and the company was eventually acquired by Kyocera.

Son used his family's adopted Japanese surname for much of his childhood.

However, after he returned to Japan, Son decided to use his family's original Korean surname instead.

For this action and other similar ones, Son is considered to be a role model for ethnic Korean children in Japan.

Masayoshi Son is the founder, CEO and largest shareholder of SoftBank; as of December 2022, he had a 34.2% stake in the company.

Since Son founded SoftBank in 1981, he has made many investments, but the vast majority of those deals failed, and his reputation as an investor rests almost solely on his $20 million initial investment in Alibaba Group in 2000, a stake that had grown to a paper valuation of about $50 billion just before the Alibaba IPO in 2014.

Masayoshi Son was the founder of SoftBank Corp. In 1981, it operated as a software vendor, becoming a major telecommunications operator in Japan and later morphing into SoftBank Group Corp., an investment holding company.

SoftBank Corp., the telecom, remained in business as a spun out company of SoftBank Group Corp, the investment firm.

A third-generation Zainichi Korean, he naturalized as a Japanese citizen in 1990.

He is the founder, representative director, corporate officer, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. (SBG), a strategic technology-focused investment holding company, as well as chairman of UK-based Arm Holdings.

He had for many years the distinction of being the person who had lost the most money in history (more than $59bn during the dot com crash of 2000 alone, when his SoftBank shares plummeted), a feat surpassed by Elon Musk in the following decades.

Masayoshi Son was born as the second of four sons in Tosu (鳥栖市, Tosu-shi), a city in the eastern part of Saga Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan.

Son is a 3rd generation Zainichi Korean.

Zainichi Koreans are ethnic Koreans with permanent residency or citizenship in Japan.

Son's grandfather, Son Jong-kyung, moved from Daegu to Japan during the Japanese colonial period, where he worked as a miner.

His father is Son Sam-heon.

His father and other Koreans illegally built their houses on land that was owned by Japan National Railways, which caused them trouble with the authorities.

His father raised pigs and chickens on that land, and started an illegal sake business that eventually became successful enough for his family to become the first people in town to own a car.

His family eventually moved out of the neighborhood so that Son could attend a better school.

Son pursued his interests in business by securing a meeting with Japan McDonald's president Den Fujita.

Taking his advice, Son began studying English and computer science.

He left to study in the U.S. on Fujita's advice.

At age 16, Son moved from Japan to California and lived with his friends and family in South San Francisco.

He finished high school in three weeks by taking the required exams at Serramonte High.

Son attended the University of California, Berkeley where he studied economics and computer science majoring in economics.

At age 19, Son became confident that computer technology would ignite the next commercial revolution after being impressed by a microchip featured in a magazine.

He began his first business endeavours while still a student.

With the help of some professors, Son created an electronic translator that he sold to Sharp Corporation for $1.7 million.

He made another $1.5 million by importing used video game machines from Japan, on credit and installing them in dormitories and restaurants.

In 2013, Son was placed 45th on the Forbes magazine's list of the World's Most Powerful People.

However, after a number of high-profile setbacks, Son's investing strategy in the first and second SoftBank Vision Funds established in 2017 and 2019, has been described as one reliant on the greater fool theory.

A controversial figure, Son has been called a gambler, mocked by some specialized media and dubbed the worst investor ever.

Known for his eccentricity and criticized because of his hubris, his sanity has been questioned in the media prompting him to reply with humorous assent.

SoftBank's 27 percent stake in Alibaba was worth $132 billion in 2018, including additional purchases of the stock since 2000.

The morphing of his own telecom company SoftBank Corp. into an investment management firm called SoftBank Group Corp. made him noted worldwide as a stock investor.

In the 2018's ranking, he was placed on the 55th position.

As of 2023, Son ranks 69th on the Forbes list of The World's Billionaires and is #239 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.