저자: 미상 · 외국인
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손정의의 생애와 소프트뱅크 투자사를 소개하는 서사형 영상. 1996년 야후 투자, 닷컴 버블 붕괴 후 알리바바 2000년 2천만달러 투자(2014년 상장 시 600억달러 이상), 비전펀드 1000억달러 조성, 위워크 투자 실패(기업가치 470억→100억달러 미만 추정), 쿠팡 10억달러 투자 후 2021년 상장으로 280억달러 회수 등을 다룸. 투자 조언이나 특정 자산의 향후 가격 전망은 없음.
다듬은 글
Before he was the man behind multi-billion dollar tech deals, before he became the face of Soft Bank, and long before his name echoed through Silicon Valley boardrooms, Masayoshi's son was a dreamer, a rebel with an obsession for innovation, risk, and above all, timing. Masayoshi Son was born in 1957 in Tosu, a small city on Japan's Kyushu Island into a family of Korean descent.
Growing up, he experienced discrimination and hardship. His family was poor, living in a shack, and often viewed as outsiders in Japanese society. But even as a child, Masayoshi saw the world differently. He believed that no circumstance was permanent and that the right idea backed by bold action could change everything.
At the age of 16, he was already thinking far beyond the boundaries of his town. He moved to California, driven by a hunger for opportunity. He barely spoke English, but he was determined to study in the land of innovation. And it was in California at the University of California, Berkeley, where the story of his future empire quietly began.
While studying economics and taking computer science courses on the side, Sun stumbled upon something that would define the rest of his life. Moore's law, the idea that computing power would double every 2 years. He saw this not just as a technical prediction, but as a once- in a century opportunity.
If technology was destined to advance at this pace, then investing in it early and aggressively could yield exponential returns. But he didn't wait until graduation to get started. At just 19, Sun created an electronic pocket translator. It was a huge hit, earning him over a million. That success gave him confidence, but also a clear mission, built something much bigger.
He returned to Japan after graduation and founded SoftBank in 1981, not as a tech company initially, but as a software distributor. Over time, SoftBank became a critical supplier for the burgeoning personal computing industry in Japan. But Masayoshi's son wasn't satisfied being just a middleman. He wanted to shape the future, not just distribute it.
And that's where the highstakes risks began. Sun was famous or infamous for his outrageous risk appetite. He made dozens of small bets on software firms and many of them flopped. But a few hits gave him confidence and funding to take bigger leaps. One of those leaps was in 1996 when he acquired a struggling internet company in the US.
That company was Yahoo. At the time, most investors thought the deal was foolish. Yahoo was bleeding money. The internet bubble was still forming and no one really understood how web search would ever make a profit. But Sun saw potential. He poured $100 million into Yahoo and it paid off massively. Within a few years, his stake was worth billions.
But the Yahoo win was just a teaser for what was to come. Sun was hunting for the next big thing. He began traveling the world, meeting every tech founder he could find, writing checks like no one else. But then came the do crash and everything he built nearly vanished. The year was 2000. The tech world was on fire, but not in the way Masayoshi's son hoped.
Just months earlier, he had been dubbed one of the richest men in the world. His net worth had skyrocketed to $76 billion, surpassing even Bill Gates on paper at least. The reason his investments in tech startups, most notably Yahoo, had soared in value during the internet boom. Soft Bank was being hailed as the kingmaker of the digital age.
But then the bubble burst. The dot crash hit like a tsunami. Within months, trillions of dollars evaporated from the stock market. Startups that were once darlings of the media went bankrupt. And with them, Masayoshi's son's fortune imploded. His net worth dropped from 76 billion to less than $1 billion, an astronomical loss in the history of wealth.
Soft Bank stock plummeted. Many called it a fluke, a flame out. Critics said Sun had gotten lucky and now reality had finally caught up. But here's what made Masayoshi Son different. He didn't retreat. He didn't shut down Soft Bank. He doubled down. While others panicked, he strategized. He understood that crashes like booms are temporary, that markets recover, but only those who position themselves in the storm can ride the wave afterward.
And during this chaotic period, Sun made one of the boldest bets in venture capital history. He met a young Chinese entrepreneur who had a wild vision to build an online marketplace that would connect global sellers and buyers. The founder's name, Jackma. The company, Alibaba. In 2000, Sun invested $20 million into Alibaba.
It was a gamble. Alibaba had barely any revenue and it was competing with several better funded companies. But Sun didn't invest based on spreadsheets. He invested based on people. And in Jack Ma, he saw the same fire he once had as a young founder in America. In interviews later, Sun said he made the decision to fund Alibaba in just 6 minutes.
At the time, no one could predict what Alibaba would become. But Masayoshi's son had faith not just in the company but in the broader trend of e-commerce and digital globalization. And it was this faith, this refusal to give up after the dot disaster that kept SoftBank alive. But the struggles weren't over yet.
For the next several years, Sun worked tirelessly to rebuild SoftBank's reputation. He shifted focus from distribution to ownership. He acquired Vodafone Japan and turned it into SoftBank mobile, a move that would help stabilize revenue. And behind the scenes, the Alibaba investment was growing slowly, quietly, and massively.
By 2014, when Alibaba went public in what was then the largest IPO in history, Sun's $20 million investment was worth over $60 billion. It was one of the greatest venture returns of all time, a 3000X return. And it wasn't luck. It was the result of belief, vision, and resilience. Masayoshi's son was back and this time he was richer, wiser, and more ambitious than ever.
But even after turning Soft Bank into a global powerhouse again, he wasn't done because in the late 2010s, he launched something that would redefine tech investing all over again. Something called the Vision Fund. By 2016, Masayoshi Sun was already a legend. He'd been to the edge of ruin and bounced back with one of the greatest tech investments in history.
But Sun didn't want to just be known for past glory. He wanted to shape the future. That's when he came up with something no one had ever attempted. Not at this scale. Not with this boldness. A venture capital fund so massive that it would dwarf every other fund in the world. The goal to control the future of technology.
It would be called the vision fund. Most VC funds raise a few hundred million, maybe a couple billion, but Sun raised $100 billion. Yes, you heard that right, $100 billion. The funding came from powerful sources. The Saudi Arabia public investment fund contributed $45 billion and another $15 billion came from the UAE's Mubala Investment Company.
Soft Bank itself committed $28 billion. The rest came from tech giants like Apple and Foxcon. Masayoshi's son pitched the fund with one message. Singularity is coming. Artificial intelligence, robotics, connected devices. He believed these things were going to converge and change life as we know it.
And he didn't want SoftBank to just participate. He wanted to lead. The Vision Fund launched in 2017 and immediately began investing at an unprecedented pace. Companies like Uber, we work, Slack, Door Dash, Kuang, ARM Holdings, and dozens more. Sun didn't just write checks. He wrote huge checks, $300 million, $500 million, sometimes billions into a single startup.
His philosophy, go big or go home. He believed that if you poured enough capital into a company with strong leadership and a bold idea, it would win the market no matter what. This approach shook up Silicon Valley. Traditional VCs were baffled and in some cases angry. Founders were empowered like never before.
Startups that would have taken years to raise funding suddenly had billions in their bank accounts. For a while, it looked like it was working. Soft Bank's portfolio companies were expanding rapidly. Valuations were skyrocketing. Sun was hailed as a tech kingmaker all over again. His interviews went viral.
His confidence was contagious. But the same boldness that brought him massive wins also came with massive risk. One of the vision funds biggest bets would soon bring Masayoshi's son crashing back to earth and once again test his resilience on the global stage. That bet was called Weiwork. Masayoshi's son believed in backing bold founders.
And when he met Adam Newman, the eccentric, charismatic CEO of Weiwork, he saw something he couldn't resist. A founder who thought big, talked bigger, and promised to elevate the world's consciousness through co-working spaces. To the rest of the world, We Work was a real estate company, one that leased office space and sublet it to freelancers and startups.
But to Adam and Son, it was much more. Adam pitched it as a tech company with ambitions to transform how people live, work, and connect. Masayoshi's son bought into the dream hard. In 2017, through the vision fund and Soft Bank itself, Sun poured in nearly $4.4 billion into Weiwork. Over time, SoftBank's total investment ballooned to over $10 billion, valuing the company at an eyepopping $47 billion.
Sun wasn't just investing in Weiwork. He was enabling Adam's aggressive expansion. New Weii work locations were opening every week across the globe. Adam launched new ventures like We Live, Co-Living Spaces, and We Grow, a private school. He even bought a private jet. Behind the scenes though, the cracks were showing.
We work was burning cash at an alarming rate. Its revenue model was risky, committing to long-term leases, but earning money from short-term sublets. And despite the tech branding, it had no proprietary software, no AI breakthroughs, nothing that justified a tech valuation. Then came the IPO filing in 2019.
The documents revealed a financial mess, massive losses, dubious related party transactions, and Adam's erratic leadership style, including his self-deing and bizarre spiritual rhetoric, spooked investors. The backlash was swift. We works IPO was withdrawn. Valuation collapsed from $47 billion to less than $10 billion.
Adam Newman was ousted as CEO and Soft Bank was left holding the pieces of what had become one of the most spectacular startup flameouts in history. Critics pounced. The media called Masayoshi son reckless. He's lost his touch. They said he's too emotional, too impulsive. Son, for the first time since the crash was in crisis mode.
He publicly admitted his mistake. "I was wrong," he said in a press conference, looking humbled. But he didn't run. Instead, he promised to fix it. SoftBank bailed out Wei Work, restructured the business, and worked tirelessly behind the scenes to salvage the investment. It was a tough period. Billions were lost.
The Vision Fund's reputation took a hit, and Sun's credibility was questioned again. But as always, he didn't stop. Because to Masayoshi's son, failure is not the end. It's just data. Just another step in a very long journey. And that journey against all odds was far from over. In fact, what happened next amid all the setbacks would once again shock the world.
By 2020, Masayoshi Son's journey had been nothing short of a roller coaster. He had built an empire, lost tens of billions, and rebuilt it again. He had transformed SoftBank into a global tech force, only to face humiliation through Weiwork's collapse. But Sun had one trait that separated him from every other investor in the game.
He kept going. While critics scoffed, Sun remained focused. Not every investment was a flop. In fact, some of the Vision Funds bets were quietly maturing, and one in particular was about to explode onto the world stage. Its name, Kuang, the Amazon of South Korea. SoftBank had invested around $1 billion into Kuang back in 2015, long before most people had even heard of it.
The e-commerce startup was bleeding money in its early years, struggling to compete with local and international giants. But founder Boom Kim, like Jack Ma, had some support, and with that came patience and capital. By 2020, Kuang had become a logistics machine. It offered next day and same day delivery to nearly 70% of the Korean population.
It built an Amazon-like ecosystem tailored to the Korean market. And during the CO9 pandemic, when online shopping soared, Kang's growth exploded. Then came the moment Masayoshi Sun had been waiting for. In March 2021, Kuang went public on the New York Stock Exchange. It was the biggest IPO of the year, and it valued the company at $84 billion.
Son's $1 billion investment turned into $28 billion. It was the redemption arc he needed. A reminder that even amid controversy and failure, the vision fund could produce massive wins. And it didn't stop there. SoftBank had stakes in other rising stars, Door Dash, Open Door, Grab, and more. The fund slowly clawed back respect.
Sun's strategy of betting on global tech still made sense, just with more discipline. But more than profits, it was his vision that inspired followers. He wasn't just investing in companies. He was investing in a future of automation, robotics, and AI. He talked about a world where artificial intelligence would be smarter than humans, where machines would take over mundane tasks, freeing us for creativity and connection.
He believed in singularity, in transformation, in a world built not on fear of the future, but hope. Even as the markets fluctuated, as tech valuations wobbled, Masayoshi son never stopped talking about tomorrow. And the best part, he wasn't a Wall Street guy. He wasn't born with billions. He was the son of Korean immigrants in Japan.
Often treated as an outsider. He spoke broken English when he came to the US. He failed with his first big startup. He lost everything twice. But each time he rose again because son knew something that every great investor understands. Money comes and goes, but vision that lasts forever. And so the story of Masayoshi's son is not just about how a failed startup led to billions.
It's a story of relentless belief. Belief in ideas, in people, and in the future. It's about how falling down isn't failure, staying down is. And in that sense, Masayoshi's son never failed. He just kept playing the long
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