SoftBank Group

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SoftBank Group evolved from a Japanese software distributor into a global technology investor with major stakes in companies such as Alibaba, Arm Holdings, and Sprint.

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SoftBank Group Corp. is a Tokyo-based multinational investment holding company that was founded in 1981 by Son Masayoshi, who over the following decades garnered a reputation as a bold and controversial entrepreneur and financier. The company evolved from a software distributor into one of the world’s most influential technology-focused investment firms.

Since its founding, SoftBank has consistently moved early into emerging technologies, invested aggressively, and quickly adapted to shifts in the tech sector. Many of the company’s investments, including Yahoo! Japan, Alibaba, and Arm Holdings, proved highly successful, while later investments and partnerships involving artificial intelligence (AI) companies such as OpenAI reflected SoftBank’s continued focus on emerging technologies and long-horizon growth sectors.

Having graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1980 with a bachelor’s degree in economics, 24-year-old Son returned to Japan and founded Nihon SoftBank in 1981 as a Tokyo-based software distribution company.

Son entered the software distribution business early in the development of the personal computer (PC) industry, an emerging field dominated by specialists and hobbyists. By embedding his company within a critical segment of the supply chain, Son aligned SoftBank with the expected expansion of personal computing. The move reflected an early recognition that PCs were likely to transform from a niche technology to a mass-market product.

In 1982, just a year after the company’s founding, Son entered the publishing business, launching two magazines: Oh! PC and Oh! MZ. The first covered general personal computing, while the second focused on users of Sharp Corporation’s MZ computers.

The magazine launches came at a time when Japan’s PC market was highly fragmented. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, major companies such as Sharp, NEC, and Fujitsu competed in a market with no dominant hardware standard. Information about personal computing was also relatively difficult for consumers and developers to access in a centralized form.

Nihon SoftBank leveraged that market gap by launching both publications. As a result, Son effectively consolidated a large share of the information flow surrounding Japan’s emerging PC industry, creating not only a readership community of developers and engineers, but also influence over distribution channels for software and services. Within the decade, the company would become one of the largest publishers of computer magazines and trade shows in Japan.

In 1990, the company changed its name to SoftBank Corp. (later known as SoftBank Group Corp.) in a move that reflected the company’s broader ambitions beyond software distribution. During the early 1990s, SoftBank expanded into U.S.–based technology ventures while introducing Silicon Valley business models and venture investment practices into Japan. Four years later, in 1994, SoftBank became a publicly traded company in an IPO valued at roughly $3 billion. The IPO also laid the groundwork for SoftBank’s transition from software distribution to acquisitions and venture capital investing.

In 1995, the company purchased U.S.–based Ziff Davis, then the world’s largest technology publishing company, for $2.1 billion. The following year, SoftBank acquired COMDEX (short for Computer Dealers’ Exhibition) for $800 million. At the time, COMDEX was among the world’s largest computer and technology trade shows.

In that same year, SoftBank entered a joint venture with Yahoo to create Yahoo! Japan. In addition to giving both companies gateway exposure to Japan’s growing Internet market, it gave them an early advantage as Internet adoption accelerated across the country. By establishing a national-scale portal for aggregating and distributing information, Yahoo! Japan became another important component of SoftBank’s broader expansion strategy. The platform consolidated user traffic, embedding the company within the main Internet distribution channels.

SoftBank’s $20 million investment in Chinese start-up Alibaba Group (BABA) in 2000 became one of the most successful venture capital investments in the tech sector. A fledgling start-up likened to China’s answer to eBay (EBAY) and Amazon (AMZN), Alibaba’s valuation grew rapidly following the investment and its subsequent IPO. By the late 2010s, SoftBank’s Alibaba stake had reached a market value exceeding $100 billion before the company gradually reduced its holdings in subsequent years.

Despite the later success of SoftBank’s Alibaba investment, its timing coincided with one of the largest market downturns in modern history, led largely by collapsing technology and Internet stocks.

The dot-com crash of 2000 nearly brought SoftBank to ruin, wiping out more than 90% of the company’s market value and reportedly reducing Son’s personal net worth by roughly $70 billion. Nevertheless, through a process of selective holdings and divestitures, SoftBank weathered the downturn. The company’s valuation began recovering within several years.

Among the company’s ventures during this period was Yahoo! BB, a broadband Internet service launched in Japan in 2001. By offering “twice the speed at almost half the price,” as the company touted in its marketing campaign, SoftBank pressured established telecommunications companies while accelerating broadband adoption across Japan.

Between 2004 and 2005, SoftBank laid the groundwork for its transition from an Internet-focused company to a fully integrated telecommunications platform. In July 2004, the company acquired Japan Telecom, reducing its reliance on external carriers while giving it control over fixed-line infrastructure.

Later that year, the company redesigned its corporate logo to resemble the banner of Kaientai, a 19th-century trading and shipping company founded during Japan’s modernization period. SoftBank described the redesign as reflecting values associated with technological change, entrepreneurship, and forward-looking expansion. In 2005, SoftBank acquired the Fukuoka Daiei Hawks, a professional baseball team later renamed the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks. The acquisition elevated the company’s profile within mainstream consumer culture and expanded the SoftBank brand beyond technology and telecommunications. Together with its telecom acquisitions, the move strengthened SoftBank’s presence across infrastructure, enterprise services, and consumer markets.

During the latter part of the 2000s and the early 2010s, SoftBank consolidated its position in the Japanese mobile telecommunications industry.

Its first major move took place in 2006, when SoftBank acquired Vodafone Japan and rebranded it as SoftBank Mobile, marking the company’s entry into Japan’s mobile phone market. As the global adoption of Apple’s iPhone began to spread rapidly, SoftBank entered into an agreement with Apple Inc. (AAPL) in 2008 to become Japan’s exclusive carrier for the iPhone 3G.

In 2013, SoftBank acquired a majority stake in U.S. carrier Sprint Corporation in what was then the largest overseas acquisition by a Japanese company. At the time, Sprint was the third largest mobile provider in the U.S. The acquisition gave SoftBank a major foothold in the U.S. telecom market, and recast the company from a regionally dominant competitor to a global competitor, although the deal also added substantial debt and operational challenges.

The $20 billion deal resulted in sustained losses, heavy debt, and corporate integration challenges—factors that renewed financial pressure on SoftBank. It took seven years for the company to reduce these pressures, culminating in Sprint’s merger with T-Mobile US (TMUS) in 2020—a move that enabled SoftBank to reduce much of its exposure while retaining a minority stake in the combined company, which it later reduced.

The next five years marked another period of transition for the company. Between 2014 and 2019, SoftBank Group advanced along two distinct but complementary lines: long-term investments in emerging technologies and large-scale investments in platform-based technology companies.

In 2014, SoftBank and its subsidiary ALDEBARAN Robotics SAS introduced Pepper, a humanoid robot that the company described as the first to recognize human faces and emotions and interact through voice and gestures. The strategic impact was more symbolic than positional, signaling SoftBank’s growing interest in AI and robotics.

A more transformational move came in 2016 when the company acquired British semiconductor designer Arm Holdings (ARM). Known for its power-efficient architectures, Arm licensed its designs to major technology companies—including Apple, Qualcomm (QCOM), Samsung, NVIDIA (NVDA), and Broadcom (AVGO)—which in turn manufactured chips through third-party foundries. The acquisition gave SoftBank a foothold in chip architecture, a critical layer of the computing supply chain.

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Son Masayoshi’s leadership of SoftBank has emphasized large-scale investment and long-term strategic ambition.

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SoftBank was already known for making aggressive investments in emerging technologies and high-growth companies. The launch of Vision Fund 1 in 2017—a $100 billion investment vehicle—marked a major escalation in both the scale of its ambitions and its influence within the global tech sector. 

Between 2017 and 2019, Vision Fund invested heavily in companies such as Uber (UBER), WeWork, DoorDash, and Grab, supplying large amounts of capital to accelerate growth and market expansion.

The original Vision Fund sought to absorb the risk of individual failures through its diversified portfolio. Its most publicized setback came in 2019 with WeWork, a unicorn company whose valuation was widely criticized as inflated and unsustainable, culminating in a failed IPO. That same year, Vision Fund 2 was announced as a successor fund—one that relied more heavily on SoftBank’s own capital amid reduced participation from outside investors.

Following the WeWork setback and the completion of Sprint’s merger with T-Mobile in 2020, SoftBank undertook a series of measures to strengthen its balance sheet, including a series of asset sales and a multiyear reduction of its stake in Alibaba, its most valuable investment.

Despite these efforts, SoftBank’s Vision Fund reported a ¥4.2 trillion ($32 billion) loss for its 2023 fiscal year. SoftBank shares fell 3.68% in Tokyo following the disclosure. Despite the losses, the company continued shifting its focus toward artificial intelligence while preparing for Arm Holdings’ U.S. IPO, which became a central part of SoftBank’s renewed focus on AI-related infrastructure and computing technologies.

Beginning in 2023, SoftBank undertook a series of investments and partnerships aimed at building an ecosystem of AI-related technologies within its portfolio.

By the mid-2020s, SoftBank was investing heavily in AI, from semiconductors and platforms to data centers and other infrastructure. The move paid off at first, helping the company return to profitability after years of losses from its Vision Funds. But the expansion also brought new risks. In the six months ended September 2026, the company posted a $3.7 billion loss related to power-generation equipment it had ordered for U.S. data centers. After plans for some projects changed, SoftBank was left with equipment it no longer needed, although the company said it could receive up to $2.1 billion in rebates on future purchases.

That combination of opportunity and risk had long been a hallmark of SoftBank under Son. The company became known for making large, concentrated investments in emerging technologies and high-growth companies. The company repeatedly reinvented itself in response to major technological shifts, evolving from software distribution into Internet services, telecommunications, semiconductor design, and AI infrastructure.

Son’s high-stakes approach, marked by large early-stage investments in emerging technologies and start-up companies, produced both major successes and high-profile setbacks. Through long-horizon vision, aggressive risk-taking, and a willingness to commit enormous sums of capital, SoftBank emerged as one of the most closely watched and controversial investment companies in the digital era.