SoftBank

SoftBank Group Corp. is a Japanese multinational conglomerate holding company, best known today for its massive investments in technology companies through its flagship Vision Fund series.

Investment Powerhouse: Often described as the world's largest technology-focused venture capital investor.

Manages the SoftBank Vision Funds (Vision Fund 1: $100 billion, Vision Fund 2: ~$40+ billion raised), which have made headline-grabbing bets on startups and growth-stage tech companies.

https://group.softbank/

Most Famous Investments & Portfolio CompaniesSome of the companies SoftBank is closely associated with include:

• Uber (early major investor)
• WeWork (infamous multi-billion-dollar investment that largely collapsed)
• Arm Holdings (acquired in 2016 for $32 billion, took private, still majority-owned)
• Alibaba (Masayoshi Son's legendary $20 million investment in 2000 turned into >$100 billion at peak)
• Didi Chuxing (China's Uber)
• Coupang (South Korean e-commerce giant)
• DoorDash, Slack, Guardant Health, Boston Dynamics, Flipkart (sold to Walmart), etc.

Leadership & Style

• Led by billionaire founder and CEO Masayoshi Son (“Masa”), who is famous for:
  • Extremely bold, long-term (he talks in 300-year timeframes), high-risk bets
  • A “cluster of No. 1” strategy in AI, robotics, and disruptive tech
  • Surviving near-bankruptcy after the dot-com crash, then making the greatest single VC return ever with Alibaba

SoftBank is known as:

• The most aggressive, high-stakes tech investor on the planet
• A company that can make or break unicorn valuations
• Having spectacular wins (Alibaba, Arm) and spectacular losses (WeWork, numerous Vision Fund write-downs in 2020–2022)
• Betting everything on an “AI revolution” (Masa Son now says the next 10 years will be defined by artificial general intelligence and has redirected almost all capital toward AI-related companies, including massive commitments to OpenAI, Anthropic, and data-center/AI infrastructure projects like Stargate with OpenAI)