SoftBank’s Son ‘embarrassed’ by track record
TOKYO: SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son says he is unhappy with how far short his accomplishments to date have fallen of his goals.
“The results still have a long way to go and that makes me embarrassed and impatient,” Son said in an interview with Nikkei Business . “I used to envy the scale of the markets in the US and China, but now you see red-hot growth companies coming out of small markets like in South-East Asia. There is just no excuse for entrepreneurs in Japan, myself included.”
Son built a $13.8 billion personal fortune by transforming SoftBank into a global technology conglomerate and reaping massive returns from investments like Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. His $100 billion Vision Fund also holds stakes in some of the world’s biggest technology startups, a portfolio that ranges from ride-hailing and genomics to vertical farms and satellites. But trouble at two of SoftBank’s marquee investments—Uber Technologies Inc. and WeWork—has cast a shadow of doubt over the Japanese billionaire’s track record just as he’s busy wooing investors for an even bigger fund.
“It only just began and I feel there is tremendous potential there,” Son told Nikkei Business. The strategy is to invest in companies that share his vision of a world being reshaped by artificial intelligence, he said.
Son has often said that he has a 30-year plan for SoftBank and that his vision extends as far out as 300 years into the future. But his company’s shares have been battered by more immediate concerns, now trading at close to 31% lower than they were in April.
Uber’s share price has also suffered a more than 30% drop from the level at which the company went public, raising questions about the rest of SoftBank’s ride-hailing portfolio, which includes China’s Didi Chuxing Inc., India’s Ola and Singapore’s Grab.