SOFTBANK'S VISION FUND MADE MASAYOSHI SON ONE OF THE BIGGEST VENTURE CAPITAL BETTORS
Most venture capital funds write checks in millions. Masayoshi Son wanted to write them in billions.
In 2017, SoftBank launched a fund that seemed almost too large to be real.
Its name:
SoftBank Vision Fund.
Its target:
$100 billion.
At its first major close, it already had more than:
$93 billion
in committed capital.
Son wasn't trying to become another venture capitalist.
He wanted to become one of the biggest technology investors on Earth.
SON HAD A DIFFERENT IDEA ABOUT SIZE
Traditional venture capital often works like this:
Find promising startups.
Invest relatively early.
Build a portfolio.
Wait for some companies to become enormously valuable.
Masayoshi Son wanted something much more aggressive.
His argument was essentially:
The next technological revolution will require enormous amounts of capital.
So why invest $20 million if you could invest $2 billion?
SoftBank's own announcement described the Vision Fund as a vehicle for making unprecedentedly large, long-term investments in the next stage of the "Information Revolution."
$100 BILLION WASN'T JUST MARKETING
The first Vision Fund brought together an unusual group of investors.
SoftBank.
Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund.
Mubadala.
Apple.
Foxconn.
Qualcomm.
Sharp.
At the first close, more than $93 billion had been committed.
SoftBank itself committed up to $28 billion, including certain in-kind contributions.
That meant Son wasn't investing only SoftBank's traditional corporate capital.
He had created a giant pool of outside money as well.
THEN THE CHECKS STARTED GETTING HUGE
The Vision Fund became famous for making investments that were enormous by startup standards.
Companies suddenly found themselves receiving:
Hundreds of millions
or even
billions of dollars
from a single investor.
The philosophy was different from simply finding the cheapest startup investment.
It was:
Find a company that could become enormous.
↓
Give it enormous amounts of capital.
↓
Let it expand extremely quickly.
↓
Try to establish a dominant position.
The theory was that scale itself could become a competitive advantage.
WEWORK BECAME THE SYMBOL OF THE STRATEGY
One of Son's most famous bets was WeWork.
SoftBank and its investment vehicles committed billions to the company.
By September 2019, SoftBank had invested approximately:
$4.5 billion
in WeWork through its wholly owned subsidiary alone, while the Vision Fund had also invested in WeWork and related companies.
Then WeWork tried to go public.
And everything changed.
THE IPO EXPOSED THE PROBLEM
WeWork filed to go public in 2019.
Investors suddenly had access to detailed financial information about the company.
The planned IPO was postponed.
The company's valuation fell dramatically.
SoftBank subsequently recognized a massive impairment related to its WeWork investment.
By September 30, 2019, SoftBank said the fair value of WeWork's entire equity had fallen to approximately:
$7.8 billion.
SoftBank expected to recognize a loss of about:
¥497.7 billion
on its WeWork-related holding.
The episode became one of the clearest examples of the danger of putting enormous amounts of capital behind a private-company valuation.
THEN CAME ONE OF THE BIGGEST LOSSES IN SOFTBANK'S HISTORY
In 2020, SoftBank announced enormous valuation losses connected to its investments.
The company said it expected losses of approximately:
¥1.8 trillion
from Vision Fund investments and other related holdings for the fiscal year.
The portfolio included troubled investments such as WeWork and OneWeb.
The Vision Fund had become famous for its giant checks.
Now it was becoming famous for something else:
giant write-downs.
BUT THIS IS WHERE THE STORY GETS INTERESTING
It would be easy to tell the story as:
"Masayoshi Son bet billions and lost billions."
That isn't the complete picture.
Venture capital portfolios are not designed for every investment to succeed.
The basic model is:
Many investments
↓
Some fail
↓
Some survive
↓
A few become enormous
↓
The winners can potentially pay for the losers
The problem is that Son's bets were so large that the failures became extraordinarily visible.
THE FUND WAS MAKING A DIFFERENT KIND OF BET
Imagine a normal investor putting:
$10 million
into a promising startup.
If the company fails, the loss is painful.
Now imagine investing:
$1 billion
in a single company.
The percentage loss might be similar.
But the absolute amount is completely different.
That's what made the Vision Fund unusual.
Its advantage was also its danger:
scale.
SOFTBANK DIDN'T ABANDON THE MODEL
After the first Vision Fund, SoftBank created additional investment vehicles, including Vision Fund 2.
The investment strategy continued to focus heavily on technology and high-growth companies.
But the financial results became much more complicated than the early headlines suggested.
SoftBank's own reporting shows that the Vision Funds went through periods of major losses and gains as private and public-company valuations changed.
THEN AI CHANGED THE STORY AGAIN
SoftBank's investment philosophy increasingly moved toward artificial intelligence.
By fiscal 2025, the Vision Funds reported:
$45.9 billion
in investment gains for the year.
Vision Fund 2 alone generated:
$44.7 billion
in investment gains.
Its cumulative gain since inception reached approximately:
$21.8 billion.
Across the Vision Funds, SoftBank said cumulative capital deployed had reached $191.6 billion, with cumulative investment return of $236.9 billion as of the fiscal year-end.
That's a radically different picture from the 2020 crisis.
ONE OF SON'S BIGGEST NEW BETS IS OPENAI
The strategy has now moved heavily toward artificial intelligence.
In February 2026, SoftBank announced another:
$30 billion
follow-on investment in OpenAI through Vision Fund 2.
SoftBank said that once the investment was completed, its cumulative investment in OpenAI was expected to reach:
$64.6 billion
for an approximately:
13% ownership interest.
That's not a normal venture-capital check.
It's a corporate-scale bet on one company.
SON'S STRATEGY HAS ALWAYS BEEN ABOUT THE NEXT PLATFORM
His investment philosophy has repeatedly focused on technologies that could become major platforms.
Earlier:
Internet
↓
Mobile
↓
Software
↓
Robotics
↓
Artificial intelligence
The idea isn't simply to invest in individual companies.
It's to identify a technological shift early and invest across the ecosystem surrounding it.
WHY WOULD FOUNDERS TAKE BILLIONS FROM SOFTBANK?
Because capital can create speed.
Imagine two competing startups.
COMPANY A
Raises:
$50 million
COMPANY B
Raises:
$1 billion
Company B might be able to:
That doesn't guarantee success.
But it can change the competitive environment.
This was one of the central ideas behind the Vision Fund.
THE PROBLEM WITH TOO MUCH MONEY
There's an uncomfortable side effect.
If a startup receives enormous amounts of capital, it can spend enormous amounts of capital.
That can encourage:
Rapid expansion
↓
Higher valuations
↓
More fundraising
↓
Even more expansion
↓
Pressure to justify the valuation
The model works beautifully if the company eventually grows into its valuation.
It becomes dangerous when growth doesn't match the amount of money invested.
VISION FUND CHANGED STARTUP FINANCING
Before the Vision Fund, a startup raising a few hundred million dollars already sounded enormous.
SoftBank helped normalize a different scale.
Suddenly, founders could talk about:
$500 million
$1 billion
$2 billion
rounds.
The investor wasn't merely supplying money.
It was changing expectations about how quickly technology companies could be funded and scaled.
THE WEIRD PARADOX OF MASAYOSHI SON
Son became famous for enormous bets.
Some became disasters.
Some became major successes.
And some changed dramatically in value depending on when they were measured.
That's particularly important with venture investing.
A private company doesn't have a constantly visible market price.
Its value can rise during a funding round.
Then collapse when public investors or new financing terms force a different valuation.
So:
Paper gains aren't cash.
And:
Paper losses aren't necessarily permanent.
What ultimately matters is what investments can actually be sold for and what cash is eventually returned to investors.
THE VISION FUND WAS NEVER REALLY A NORMAL VC FUND
That may be the most important point.
SoftBank wasn't simply trying to find the next successful startup.
It was trying to build an investment machine capable of placing massive bets on entire technological eras.
That requires enormous capital.
It also creates enormous downside when the thesis is wrong.
MAACAT PERSPECTIVE
Masayoshi Son turned venture investing into something that looked more like industrial-scale capital allocation.
The Vision Fund raised more than $93 billion at its first close, targeted $100 billion, and gave startups access to amounts of capital that traditional venture investors rarely matched.
The strategy produced spectacular failures.
It also produced spectacular gains.
And years later, SoftBank was again making tens-of-billions-of-dollars bets — this time heavily focused on artificial intelligence.
The lesson isn't simply that huge bets are good or bad.
It's that scale changes everything.
When you invest millions, a mistake can hurt.
When you invest billions, a mistake can reshape an entire company — and potentially the investor itself.
Masayoshi Son didn't just bet on startups.
He bet on entire technological revolutions.
