Masayoshi Son is back in the news once more! The 68-year-old founder and CEO of SoftBank Group is famous for his radical investment risk taking. Son has been infamous for his readiness to take enormous gambles. Recently, he did just that by selling his entire stake in Nvidia for $5.8 billion and reorienting that money toward AI. This decision is a mystery to most in the market. That’s remarkable, particularly in light of the volatile landscape SoftBank has driven through over the last few years.
Son’s recent actions are explicable, given the financial pressure he has been under. His personal fortune flushed down the toilet. Instead, it plummeted by $70 billion. This dive occurred as SoftBank’s own market cap plunged from $180 billion to $2.5 billion. Yet, in the face of these challenges, Son is determined as ever to keep positioning SoftBank at the cutting edge of technological innovation.
To date, Son has made a number of legendary investment decisions that have arguably defined his career. In fact, he is perhaps best known for an early investment in Alibaba in 2000. This decision followed one of the world’s largest IPOs after just a six-minute meeting with co-founder Jack Ma. As it turns out, that bet paid off tremendously! By February 2000, it propelled his net worth to nearly $78 billion and, for a few moments in time, he became the wealthiest person on the planet. As for Ma, by 2020 his stake in Alibaba had risen to a hair-raising $150 billion.
While there have certainly been ups and downs, it’s clear that Son’s ambitious spirit has hardly been tempered. In early 2019, Robert made national headlines when he overrode objections from his own executives. He bravely put his chips on WeWork, laying a stunning $47 billion valuation on the co-working company. This decision has more recently faced criticism in light of WeWork’s later woes. Son’s enormous wager on Uber created massive paper losses for a number of years.
Through the years, geopolitics has drawn Son’s attention, often with mixed motives and mixed results. That’s why his condemnation of the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi — which he described as “horrific and deeply regrettable” — is troubling. He asserted that SoftBank can’t “wash our hands of the Saudi people.” This statement is indicative of his complicated stance on foreign investment and diplomacy.
His recent divestment from Nvidia is especially interesting. He fled his job at about $181.58 per share, or 14% less than Nvidia’s peak of $212.19. This latest move follows SoftBank’s decision in 2019 to sell a $4 billion stake in Nvidia for a paltry $3.6 billion. Those shares would be worth more than $150 billion today!
Watch out world, because Masayoshi Son is plotting yet another historic return. Industry experts agree that how his latest investments fare will be telling, especially in today’s quickly evolving market. The heavy emphasis on AI represents a new tack for SoftBank. This major pivot may determine the company’s long-run fortunes and remold its place in the technology industry.
