From chicken feed to Uber: Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son buys into ride-sharing giant
His family scratched a living raising poultry and hogs in a country where Koreans have long faced discrimination stemming from the Japanese occupation of the peninsula between 1910 and 1945
Once asked on Twitter about his receding hairline, Masayoshi Son, founder of Japanese telecoms giant SoftBank, retorted: “My hair is not receding. I’m advancing.”
It was a typically bullish remark from the 60-year-old tycoon, listed by Forbes magazine as Japan’s richest man with an estimated fortune of US$22.2 billion, who has embarked on a furious spree of purchases culminating in Thursday’s deal to take a hefty stake in ride-sharing app Uber.
Under Son’s leadership, SoftBank is sending shock waves through the tech world with its massive new Vision Fund – a venture capital fund with US$100 billion in its coffers intended for start-ups.
The new fund is expected to dominate the industry to such an extent, it’s playfully referred to as a “gorilla”.
The bold and flamboyant Son was one of the first personalities from the business world to meet another unconventional tycoon – Donald Trump – last year after his election victory.
I sat in a cart when I was small. It was so slimy that I felt sick
Son pledged to invest US$50 billion in the US economy and create 50,000 jobs and Trump’s off-the-cuff announcement of this gave reporters their first glimpse into the president-elect’s unusual communication strategy.