SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son plans his comeback

A new Financial Times profile of Masayoshi Son begins with the SoftBank CEO looking downcast, staring at his “ugly” face on Zoom and saying to himself, “I haven’t done anything I’m proud of.”

The scene has been presented as a prelude to a hopeful comeback, with Son largely disappearing from the public eye after SoftBank’s Vision Fund suffered huge losses on investments such as WeWork. Lionel Barber, who wrote a new biography of Son called “Gambling Man,” said that while Son was “penitent,” he was actually “planning a comeback.”

Now SoftBank is betting big on AI, finding success by taking chip design company Arm public — though even in the case of AI, Son admits that “maybe we were a bit early.”

Beyond the details of Son’s investment strategy and track record, there are also some fun personal details, like his apparent fascination with Napoleon. When an activist investor mentioned Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg in a meeting with Son in 2020, he reportedly dismissed them as “one-business people.”

“The correct comparison for me is to Napoleon, Genghis Khan or Emperor Qin,” Son said. “I’m not a CEO. I’m building an empire.”