science

Masayoshi Son

Masayoshi Son is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Masayoshi Son rather than just read about it. In short: Masayoshi Son (Japanese: 孫正義; born Masayoshi Yasumoto, August 11, 1957) is a Japanese entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. A Zainichi Korean, he is the founder, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank Group (SBG), a technology-focused investment holding company, as well as chairman of UK-based Arm Holdings and US-based Stargate LLC.

Key takeaways

Masayoshi Son belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Masayoshi Son to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Masayoshi Son from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Masayoshi Son (Japanese: 孫正義; born Masayoshi Yasumoto, August 11, 1957) is a Japanese entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. A Zainichi Korean, he is the founder, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank Group (SBG), a technology-focused investment holding company, as well as chairman of UK-based Arm Holdings and US-based Stargate LLC. As an entrepreneur, he achieved notability in software distribution, computing-related book and magazine publishing, and telecommunications in Japan, starting in the 1980s and booming throughout the 1990s and 2000s. His early $20 million investment in Alibaba Group in 2000 grew substantially over the years, reaching a valuation of around $75 billion by 2014 following Alibaba's IPO, and contributing significantly to SoftBank's financial success. SoftBank's 27 percent stake in Alibaba was worth $132 billion in 2018, including additional purchases of the stock since 2000. The morphing of his own telecom company SoftBank Corp. into an investment management firm called SoftBank Group Corp. made him noted worldwide as a stock investor. He is known for his bold investment strategies, sometimes resulting in major losses, particularly with the first and second SoftBank Vision Funds. In 2013, Son was placed 45th on the Forbes magazine's list of the World's Most Powerful People. In 2017 he was named Entrepreneur of the Year at The Asian Awards. As of May 2025, Son ranks 65th on the Forbes's list of The World's Billionaires and is No. 177 on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He had for many years the distinction of being the person who had lost the most money in history (more than $59 billion during the dot-com crash of 2000 alone, when his SoftBank shares plummeted), a feat surpassed by Elon Musk in the following decades.

Early life and education Masayoshi Son was born Masayoshi Yasumoto on August 11, 1957, in Tosu, Saga Prefecture to Zainichi Korean parents. Son's grandfather, Son Jong-kyung, a native of Daegu, moved to Japan during the Japanese colonial period where he worked as a miner. Son's father, Son Sam-heon, raised pigs and chickens, and illegally built the family home on land that was owned by the Japanese National Railways, which caused them trouble with the authorities. His father started an illegal sake business that eventually became successful enough for his family to become the first people in town to own a car. His family eventually moved out of the neighborhood so that Son could attend a better school. Throughout his childhood, Son's family refrained from using their Korean names. He did however experience bullying and discrimination for his Korean origin and at one point contemplated suicide. Son idolized businessman Den Fujita, the founder of McDonald's Japan, and attempted to contact him multiple times to no avail. This culminated in Son purchasing a plane ticket to Tokyo and making an unsolicited appearance at the headquarters of McDonald's Japan, where he was able to speak to Fujita for 15 minutes. Fujita advised Son to begin studying English as well as computer science, and to move to the United States for education. Following this advice, Son dropped out of high school in Japan and, at the age of 16, moved to Oakland, California. He studied English at Holy Names College and graduated from high school in three weeks after attending Serramonte High School. He subsequently enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied economics, graduating in 1980. He began his first business endeavours while still a student. With the help of some professors including Forrest Mozer, Son created an electronic translator that he sold to Sharp Corporation for $1.7 million. He made another $1.5 million by importing used video game machines from Japan, on credit and installing them in dormitories and restaurants. He also started a video game company called Unison World in Oakland; he sold the company to an associate for $2 million, and the company was later acquired by Kyocera. Following his return to Japan, he decided to adopt his Korean surname Son for professional purposes instead of his family's Japanese surname Yasumoto. He encountered pushback from some of his relatives who feared to be exposed as Korean. For this action and other similar ones, Son is considered to be a role model for ethnic Korean children in Japan.

Career

SoftBank Son is the founder, CEO and largest shareholder of SoftBank; as of December 2022, he had a 34.2 per cent stake in the company. He founded the company in 1981 as a software distributor and a publisher of computer-related literature.

SoftBank Corp. Son was the CEO of SoftBank Corp., the mobile business of SoftBank Group, until 2021.

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; he was briefly the richest person in the world before the stock market crashed. Son's holding company SoftBank owned 29.5% of Alibaba, which was worth around $108.7 billion as of 23 October 2018. Although SoftBank's stake in Yahoo! had dwindled to 7%, Son established Yahoo! BroadBand in September 2001 with Yahoo! Japan in which he still owned a controlling interest. After a severe devaluation of SoftBank's equity, Son was forced to focus his attention on Yahoo! BB and BB Phone. So far, SoftBank has accumulated about $1.3 billion in debt. Yet, Yahoo! BB acquired Japan Telecom, the then third largest broadband and landline provider with 600,000 residential and 170,000 commercial subscribers. Yahoo! BB is now Japan's leading broadband provider. In June 2020, Son stepped down from the Alibaba board. By 2023, SoftBank had sold most of its Alibaba stake.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Masayoshi Son

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Masayoshi Son claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Masayoshi Son before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Masayoshi Son ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Masayoshi Son

In research: Masayoshi Son appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Masayoshi Son in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Masayoshi Son is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1957 births, 20th-century Japanese businesspeople, 21st-century Japanese businesspeople, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Masayoshi Son outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Masayoshi Son in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Masayoshi Son means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Masayoshi Son out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Masayoshi Son in simple terms?

Why does Masayoshi Son matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Masayoshi Son?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Masayoshi Son.