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Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index

⬅ # 62 Leonid Mikhelson|# 64 He Xiangjian ➡

# 63 Masayoshi Son 

$27.9B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 5/13/2024
$365.2M (1.31%)

# 63 Masayoshi Son 

$27.9B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 5/13/2024
$365.2M (1.31%)
OccupationCEO, Softbank
Source of WealthTelecom, Investments
Age66
ResidenceTokyo, Japan
Marital StatusMarried
Children2
EducationBS, University of California, Berkeley
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$18.6B
Masayoshi Son
Masayoshi Son
Japan
Net worth: $27.9B

Self-Made Score 

Wealth History

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Biography

Overview

Masayoshi Son, born on August 11, 1957, is a Japanese billionaire technology entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist.
He is the founder, representative director, corporate officer, chairman, and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp. and chairman of UK-based Arm Holdings.
Son is a third-generation Zainichi Korean who naturalized as a Japanese citizen in 1990.
Known for his eccentricity and criticized for his hubris, Son has been a controversial figure in the business world.

Early Life and Education

Son was born in Tosu, Japan, as the second of four sons to Zainichi Korean parents.
His grandfather, Son Jong-kyung, moved from Daegu, Korea, to Japan during the Japanese colonial period.
Son pursued business interests after meeting Japan McDonald's president Den Fujita, studying English, and computer science.
At 16, he moved to California, finished high school in three weeks, and attended the University of California, Berkeley, studying economics and computer science.

Entrepreneurial Journey

Son founded SoftBank in 1981, which evolved from a software vendor to a major Japanese telecommunications operator.
His notable investments include Alibaba in 2000, SoftBank's 27 percent stake in Alibaba was worth $132 billion in 2018.
Son's investments, especially in the SoftBank Vision Funds, have been criticized, with high-profile setbacks and losses.

SoftBank History

Son is the founder, CEO, and largest shareholder of SoftBank; as of December 2022, he had a 34.2% stake in the company.
SoftBank Corp., initially a telecom, became SoftBank Group Corp., an investment firm.
Son used SoftBank Corp. as an investment vehicle, experiencing both successes and failures in various investments.

Yahoo! and Alibaba

Son was an early investor in internet firms, buying a share of Yahoo! in 1995 and investing a $20 million stake into Alibaba in 1999.
SoftBank's stake in Alibaba reached around $108.7 billion in 2018, and by 2023, SoftBank had sold most of its Alibaba stake.

Arm Holdings

In July 2016, SoftBank acquired Arm Holdings for £23.4 billion ($31.4 billion), completing the transaction in September 2016.
The attempt to sell Arm Limited to Nvidia for $40 billion failed in 2022, leading to plans for a U.S. stock market listing.

Sprint Corporation

Through SoftBank, Son acquired a 76% share in Sprint, later reaching about 84% ownership.
Sprint and T-Mobile US merged in 2020, with SoftBank acquiring 4.5% of Deutsche Telekom AG.

Solar Power

In response to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Son criticized the nuclear industry and invested in a nationwide solar power network for Japan.
He invested in a 200GW solar project in Saudi Arabia and underwrote a significant portion of new renewable provision in India.

Vision Fund

Established in 2017, SoftBank Group's Vision Fund aimed at investing in emerging technologies, but it faced challenges and losses.
Son planned to raise $100 billion for a new fund every few years, investing about $50 billion a year in startups.
By 2022, SoftBank Vision Fund posted a record 3.5 trillion yen loss ($27.4 billion).

Personal Life

Son met his wife, Masami Ohno, while studying at the University of California, Berkeley; they got married in 1979 and have two daughters.
He owns the SoftBank Hawks, a professional Japanese baseball team, and lives in Tokyo in a mansion valued at $50 million.

How long would it take you to become as rich as Masayoshi Son?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 44.01% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Masayoshi Son's net worth of $27.9B.

Is this realistic? It depends how closely the VIX-TA-Macro Advanced model performs to its history in the future. Since Grizzly Bulls launched on January 1, 2022, it's returned 40.45% compared to 10.08% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

Enter data in all but one field below, then calculate the missing value

Masayoshi Son is very wealthy, but what's stopping you from reaching that same level of success? As summarized in our five fundamental rules to wealth building, becoming wealthy in a modern capitalist economy is not complicated. There's actually only three variables:

  1. Your starting capital
  2. Your earnings after expenses
  3. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of your savings

Most people start with zero or very little, so if you weren't born into wealth, don't fret! The majority of the fortunate folks listed in our Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index came from middle class or lower backgrounds. The most distinguishing characteristic of the group is their ability to consistently earn a high CAGR on their savings.

Every billionaire has a unique strategy to achieve high CAGR. For Masayoshi Son, Telecom and Investments are the primary sources. Whether you choose to invest your savings in your own businesses or the businesses of others is not as important. The salient piece of the puzzle is ensuring that your hard-earned savings are generating sufficient CAGR to reach your long term goals.

Most people simply invest their money in index funds and call it a day. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it guarantees relative mediocrity. To achieve greatness, you need to invest your money to earn higher than average returns. In the long run, better investors will always finish ahead of better earners.

Source: Grizzly Bulls reporting

Methodology: Grizzly Bulls' Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires and richest people. Grizzly Bulls strives to provide the most accurate net worth calculations available. We pull data from public equity markets, SEC filings, public real estate records, and other reputable sources.

The index is dynamic and updates daily at the close of U.S. stock market trading based on changes in the markets, economy, and updates to Grizzly Bulls' proprietary algorithm of personal wealth calculation. Stakes in public companies are tracked daily based on the relevant closing prices of the underlying securities. Additionally, stakes in private companies, cash, real estate, and other less easily valued assets are updated periodically through careful analysis of insider transactions, comparable public company sales / EBITDA multiples, etc.

Edited by: Lee Bailey