Masayoshi Son

Masayoshi Son is a Japanese entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist, born in Tosu, Saga Prefecture, in 1957 to Zainichi Korean parents. He moved to California as a teenager, studied economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and returned to Japan to found SoftBank in 1981 as a software distributor and publisher of computer-related literature. He grew the business through telecommunications and early internet investments, among them an early stake in Alibaba Group that became enormously valuable, and he later led SoftBank's purchase of Arm Holdings in 2016. He is chairman and chief executive of SoftBank Group, known for bold investment strategies that have produced both major gains and large losses.