Short answers, pulled from the story.
Masayoshi Son founded SoftBank in September 1981, at age 24, initially as a software distributor in Tokyo. He remains the company's largest individual shareholder, holding 29.68% of shares as of the 31st of March 2025.
The SoftBank Vision Fund is a technology-focused private equity fund created in May 2017, with initial capital of $93 billion, making it the world's largest fund of its kind. Its principal backers included the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia ($45 billion), SoftBank Group ($28 billion), and investors such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Larry Ellison.
SoftBank invested $20 million in Alibaba in 2000, when the company was a little-known Chinese internet venture. By the time Alibaba went public in September 2014, that stake had grown to $60 billion.
The Stargate Project is a cooperative AI infrastructure venture announced in January 2025, involving SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle, and MGX, with an estimated investment of $500 billion to build AI infrastructure in the United States. The project aims to create 100,000 new jobs by 2029.
SoftBank invested a total of $4.4 billion in WeWork by August 2017, but WeWork's planned IPO was canceled in September 2019 and the company filed for bankruptcy in November 2023.
SoftBank holds approximately 90.6% of Arm Holdings following Arm's IPO on the Nasdaq on the 14th of September 2023, which raised $4.87 billion at a $54.5 billion valuation. SoftBank had acquired Arm in September 2016 for more than $32 billion.