A new Financial Times profile of Masayoshi Son begins with the SoftBank CEO appearing to have hit rock bottom, staring at his “ugly” face on Zoom and telling himself he's “done nothing to be proud of.”
The scene is being portrayed as a harbinger of an expected comeback for Son, who has largely disappeared from the public eye since SoftBank's Vision Fund suffered huge losses on investments including WeWork. Lionel Barber, author of a new Son biography, “Gambling Man,” says Son appeared to be “engaging in asceticism” but was actually “plotting a comeback.”
Now SoftBank is betting big on AI, having successfully taken chip designer Arm public, but even on AI, Son acknowledged that “we may have been a little premature.”
Beyond the details of Son's investment strategy and track record, there are some intriguing personal details, such as his apparent interest in Napoleon. When an activist investor mentioned Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg during a meeting with Son in 2020, Son reportedly dismissed them as “one business guys.”
“The appropriate comparison for me would be Napoleon, Genghis Khan or the First Emperor of Qin,” Mr. Sun said. “I'm not a CEO. I'm building an empire.”