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Entrepreneur Masayoshi Son | the Article of your dreams
Who is Masayoshi Son?
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| Masayoshi Son |
Masayoshi Son was born on 11 August 1957 in Tosu, the city of the eastern part of Saga Prefecture. He is a 3rd generation Zainichi Korean which means, Korean who has permanent citizenship in Japan. During the Japanese colonial period, Masayoshi’s grandfather moved from Daegu to Japan. His grandfather worked as a miner and his father was a fish dealer and pig farmer. He was very poor at an early age. He has spent his childhood with pigs and sheep. His Korean name was Son Jeong-Ul. Masayoshi Son is a Korean-Japanese billionaire, investor, philanthropist and technology entrepreneur. He is the founder of Japanese holding company SoftBank, chief executive officer (CEO) of SoftBank mobile and chairman of Arm-Holdings.
Masayoshi Son’s education
By taking the advice of Dan Fujita the president of McDonald’s he pursued his interest in business and studied English and Computer Science. He left Japan at the age of 16 and moved to California and finished high school in three weeks by taking the required exams. At the age of 19, he majored in engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Masayoshi was very confident about the ignition of the revolution of computer technology. In 1980 he was graduated with B.A. Economics from Berkeley then he started Unison in Oakland.
Masayoshi Son’s Family & Lifestyle
He is married to Masami Ohno. They met while they were studying in the United States. They have two daughters. He lives in a mansion worth $50 million. He also bought a villa near Silicon Valley in Woodside, California worth $117 million. He is the second oldest of the three brothers. His younger brother Taizo Son is a serial entrepreneur. He is the founder of Gungho Online Entertainment which is a Japanese video game publisher and creator.
First Business | Masayoshi Son
His first business attempt started as a student. He created an electronic translator with the help of his professors. It was sold for $1.7 million to Sharp Corporation which is a Japanese multinational company that manufactures and designs electronic products. It is based in Sakai- Ku, Osaka Prefecture. He imported video game machines and installed them in restaurants, for that he earned $1.5 million.
SoftBank
After graduation, Masayoshi Son moved back to Japan and started a Company Nihon SoftBank.Later on, the company was named SoftBank. It was founded in 1981. Earlier it was a software distributor company. Its headquarters are located in Minato, Tokyo. SoftBank invests in the companies operatic in the energy, technology and financial sector. They went to the magazine publishing business which reached great success. But apart from that Masayoshi Son had a different perspective on business and the world. So he began investing in tech companies. In 2017 SoftBank and the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia partnered and created the SoftBank vision fund. It was made with the investors of technology companies such as Microsoft, Foxconn and Apple as well as financial companies such as Mizuho Bank, MUFG Bank and Standard Chartered. In 2019 another fund was founded named SoftBank vision fund 2 excluded the participation of the Saudi Arabia government and included companies like Apple, Foxconn, Microsoft and others. The fund is based on artificial intelligence-based technology. It reaches an investment of $108 billion of which $38 billion will be it’s own. The second vision fund hangs in balance as a result of the primary one announcing a record loss of $18 billion for FY20. In Asia, the fund has made investments in many startups like Lenskart, Ola, Firstcry, Grofers and many more. And in America, it has made investments in companies like WeWork, Doordash, Uber and many more.
Yahoo!
It is an American web service provider. It was established in January 1994 by David
Filo and Jerry Yang, at that time they were graduate students at Stanford University of California. It is operated by a namesake company Yahoo Inc. Its 90% are owned by Investment funds, managed by Apollo Global Management and its 10% is owned by Verizon Communications.
Investments in Alibaba and Yahoo!
In 1995 Masayoshi Son buy shares of Yahoo!. In 1999 he invested a $20 million stake in Alibaba. The company SoftBank owns a share of 29% of Alibaba which is worth $108.7 billion as of 2018. SoftBank’s stake in Yahoo! has decreased by 7%. At that time he established Yahoo BroadBand with Yahoo! Japan. After the reduction of SoftBank equality, Masayoshi Son was forced to focus on Yahoo!
BB and BB phones. SoftBank accumulated about $1.3 billion. Yahoo! BB grasp Japan Telecom and now it is Japan’s leading broadband provider. Masayoshi Son stepped out of Alibaba in 2020.
Arm Holdings
It is a British software design and semiconductor design company in Cambridge. Its primary business is to design the ARM processors, other chips and software development tools under the DS-5. SoftBank acquire Arm Holdings in 2016 for $34 billion which was the greatest purchase of the European Technology Company. In 2020 SoftBank started selling U.K. chip designer Arm Limited to U.S. chipmaker Nvidia worth $40 billion. After announcing this deal it was said that the combination of Arm Limited and Nvidia will create a computing company that will lead the era of Artificial Intelligence.
Sprint
In 2010 Masayoshi Son buys 70% of the shares of Sprint Corporation through his holdings in SoftBank. Later on, SoftBank accumulated 84% ownership.
Solar Power
In 2011, Masayoshi Son censure the nuclear industry for creating the problems that worries the Japanese the most. He invested in the national power solar power network of Japan. In 2018, he invested in a solar power 200GW development planned for Saudi Arabia as a part of vision 2030. It was the biggest ever solar plant in which Masayoshi invested.
