The Financial Times’ new profile of Mayoshi Son begins with the SoftBank CEO seemingly hitting rock bottom, staring at his “ugly” face on Zoom and telling himself that he “hasn’t done anything worth bragging about.”
In fact, Son had largely disappeared from the public eye after SoftBank’s Vision Fund suffered huge losses on investments like WeWork. But FT writer Lionel Barber, who called Son’s new biography “The Gambler,” wrote that while Son “appeared to be penitent,” he was actually “planning a comeback.”
Now SoftBank is betting big on AI and is having success with its public offering of chip design company Arm.
There are also some interesting personal details in the profile, such as Son’s interest in Napoleon. When the activist investor mentioned Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg in a 2020 meeting with Son, he reportedly dismissed them as “people who are only focused on one business.”
“The best comparisons for me are Napoleon, Genghis Khan and Qin Shi Huang,” Son said. “I’m not a CEO. I’m building an empire.”
