SoftBank Group Corp.
Technology Investment Conglomerate and TelecommunicationsFounded 1981- Updated June 2026
Reviewed by Swet Parvadiya
Last reviewed: June 2026
CorpDigest
SoftBank Group Corp.
Company History
Founded 1981 in Tokyo, Japan
Last reviewed: 2026-06-10 · By Swet Parvadiya
Masayoshi Son was 24 years old and still finishing his Berkeley economics degree when he imported Space Invaders machines from Japan and sold play time to students on his college campus, generating enough cash to fund his return to Japan and his first business venture. He founded SoftBank in September 1981 in Fukuoka, Japan, with two part-time employees and a stated mission to become the largest computer software distributor in Japan within five years. He set the ambition before he had the infrastructure to execute it, a pattern that has characterized every subsequent decade of the company's history.
SoftBank became the dominant distributor of PC software in Japan through the 1980s and early 1990s, building the logistics relationships and retail presence that gave Son access to capital and credibility when the internet arrived. The 1995 Yahoo! Investment — Son met Jerry Yang through Masahiro Inoue of Softbank's U.S. Operations and wrote a check that Yang reportedly found surprisingly large for a company with almost no revenue — was made at the precise moment when the web was transitioning from academic infrastructure to commercial platform. Son recognized the transition before most Japanese institutions had acknowledged it.
The 2000 investment in Alibaba was similarly timed to a moment of maximum uncertainty. Son met Jack Ma in Beijing before the company had significant revenue, saw a pattern he recognized from the Yahoo! Investment — charismatic founder, massive addressable market, early in the adoption curve — and invested $20 million. The financial crisis of 2008-2009 nearly destroyed the value of that position before Alibaba's eventual growth justified the bet.
The 2006 acquisition of Vodafone Japan for $15.1 billion gave SoftBank the telecommunications infrastructure that now generates the stable cash flows supporting the entire group's leverage structure. Son financed the acquisition with debt that seemed reckless at the time and spent years deleveraging, but the strategic outcome was correct: owning a major Japanese mobile operator gave SoftBank the balance sheet gravity it needed to pursue the Vision Fund vision a decade later.
Masayoshi Son founded SoftBank Corp in 1981 in Tokyo, Japan, at the age of 24, with a mere $10,000 in starting capital and a radical vision to build a company that would survive and dominate the next 300 years of human technological advancement. A forward-thinking entrepreneur with deep backgrounds in economics and computer science, Son understood that the personal computer revolution was in its infancy and that the companies controlling the software and the distribution channels would capture the vast majority of the value created by the information age. He pioneered the model of the technology investment conglomerate, acquiring small, regional software distributors and consolidating them under the SoftBank brand, rapidly building a national footprint that could be leveraged to dominate the emerging internet and telecommunications markets. Son's vision transformed the business from a local software distributor into a critical component of the global technology ecosystem, establishing the operational standards and financial discipline that would guide the company through the dot-com crash, the 2008 financial crisis, and its eventual dominance as the world's largest technology venture capital fund. His leadership established the foundational DNA of the company, prioritizing the acquisition of high-quality, strategic intellectual property and the deployment of massive, company-defining capital that would become the bottleneck assets of the digital economy.
Masayoshi Son founds SoftBank Corp in Tokyo, Japan, pioneering the software distribution model and beginning the aggressive acquisition of regional technology distributors.
SoftBank makes a $100 million investment in Yahoo!, a decision that ultimately generates returns of over 8,000% and provides the massive capital required to execute its grand strategic vision.
The company executes the shocking, $136 billion acquisition of Vodafone’s Japanese operations, transforming SoftBank into a dominant national telecommunications operator and securing the physical network infrastructure for the mobile internet revolution.
SoftBank acquires the British semiconductor design firm ARM Holdings for $32 billion, gaining absolute control over the foundational intellectual property of the mobile computing era and securing a perpetual, high-margin royalty stream.
The company launches the $100 billion Vision Fund, capitalized by a massive commitment from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, transforming SoftBank into the world's largest and most aggressive technology venture capital fund.
SoftBank successfully executes the initial public offering of ARM Holdings on the NASDAQ, establishing a transparent, public market valuation for its most valuable asset and generating massive proceeds to pay down debt.
SoftBank reports $48.1 billion in FY2024 revenue, demonstrating the resilience of its dual-engine model and the successful execution of its defensive asset liquidation strategy during the 2022-2023 technology winter.
To execute a massive strategic consolidation of the global semiconductor intellectual property market, gaining absolute control over the foundational architecture of the mobile computing era and securing a perpetual, high-margin royalty stream.
To significantly expand the company's national footprint and solidify its position as a top-tier provider to Japanese consumers and businesses during the aggressive consolidation of the mobile internet market.
SoftBank was founded in September 1981 in Tokyo by 24-year-old Masayoshi Son as Nihon SoftBank, a wholesale distributor of packaged PC software. Son spotted the gap between Japanese consumer electronics makers and a fragmented software supply chain, securing exclusive rights to distribute titles from US developers including Hudson Soft and later Microsoft. By 1982 SoftBank had launched two trade magazines, Oh! PC and Oh! MZ, that became core revenue streams. Through the 1980s the company expanded into computer book publishing and exhibitions, including Comdex Japan. SoftBank IPO'd on the JASDAQ in 1994. In 1995 Son acquired the US Comdex trade show for around $800 million and bought a controlling stake in Ziff-Davis Publishing for roughly $2.1 billion the same year, repositioning SoftBank as a global tech-media conglomerate. A pivotal 1996 joint venture with Jerry Yang and David Filo created Yahoo Japan with SoftBank holding 60 percent, a stake that would dominate Japan's portal market for two decades. The dot-com crash in 2000-2001 wiped out roughly 99 percent of SoftBank's market value, prompting Son to pivot from publishing into Japanese broadband and telecom.
The transformation began in September 2001 when SoftBank launched Yahoo BB, an ADSL broadband service that undercut NTT pricing by roughly half and famously gave away free modems on Tokyo street corners. Within four years Yahoo BB was Japan's largest broadband ISP with over 5 million lines. In 2004 SoftBank acquired Japan Telecom for around 340 billion yen, giving it a fixed-line backbone. The defining move came in March 2006 when SoftBank bought Vodafone Japan, then Japan's number three mobile carrier, for about 1.75 trillion yen (roughly $15.1 billion) in the largest leveraged buyout in Asian history at the time. The unit was rebranded SoftBank Mobile and Son negotiated exclusive Japanese rights to the iPhone in 2008, driving subscriber growth from under 17 million to over 30 million within seven years. SoftBank Corp., the domestic telecom unit, was carved out and IPO'd in December 2018 at about 2.65 trillion yen ($23.5 billion), then one of the largest IPOs in Japanese history. The telecom unit now operates SoftBank, Y!mobile and LINE Mobile brands and supplies the cash flow that underwrites Son's investment activities at the parent SoftBank Group.
In October 2000 Masayoshi Son met Jack Ma in Beijing and after a roughly six-minute pitch wrote a check for $20 million for a stake in Alibaba, followed by additional rounds bringing SoftBank's investment to about $100 million by 2004. When Alibaba IPO'd on the NYSE in September 2014 at $68 per share, SoftBank held roughly 34 percent of the company, a stake valued at over $50 billion on day one and peaking near $200 billion in 2020. The position became SoftBank's single most important asset and the financial backbone underwriting the Vision Fund era. Beginning in 2016 SoftBank used prepaid forward contracts and derivative settlements to monetize the stake without triggering large tax events, raising tens of billions of dollars. By August 2024 SoftBank had effectively divested almost its entire Alibaba holding, generating cumulative proceeds estimated above $70 billion since 2016. The Alibaba investment is widely cited as the highest absolute-dollar return on a single venture check in history, and its monetization funded the WeWork bailout, Vision Fund losses, ARM repurchase and aggressive buybacks across 2020-2024.
In July 2016 SoftBank announced the acquisition of UK chip designer ARM Holdings for 24.3 billion pounds, roughly $32 billion in cash, paying a 43 percent premium to the prior share price. Son framed ARM as a hundred-year bet on the Internet of Things and AI, arguing that ARM's instruction-set architecture in over 95 percent of smartphones positioned it to dominate billions of future edge devices. The deal was completed in September 2016 and ARM was delisted. SoftBank later transferred a 25 percent stake to the Vision Fund. An attempted $40 billion sale to Nvidia announced in September 2020 collapsed in February 2022 after objections from the FTC, EU and UK regulators on competition grounds. SoftBank then pivoted to a public listing. On 14 September 2023 ARM Holdings re-listed on the Nasdaq at $51 per share, valuing the company at about $54.5 billion and raising roughly $4.87 billion in what was the largest US IPO of 2023. SoftBank retained roughly 90 percent of ARM after the offering, and the position appreciated to over $130 billion in subsequent quarters as AI demand drove revaluation across chip-related equities.
SoftBank and the Vision Fund first invested in WeWork in 2017 and by early 2019 had committed roughly $10.65 billion at valuations escalating to $47 billion in a January 2019 round. WeWork filed for an IPO in August 2019 disclosing $1.9 billion in 2018 losses, related-party transactions with founder Adam Neumann and a corporate structure that triggered investor revolt. The IPO was pulled in September 2019 and valuation collapsed to under $8 billion within weeks. SoftBank took control in October 2019 with a roughly $9.5 billion bailout package, including buying out Neumann with a controversial exit award worth up to $1.7 billion. WeWork eventually listed via SPAC in October 2021 at a $9 billion valuation, then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2023. SoftBank disclosed cumulative losses of more than $14 billion on the position by 2023 and writedowns continued through restructuring. The episode triggered governance reforms at SoftBank including an external Vision Fund investment committee, contributed to the departure of operating partner Marcelo Claure after a public severance dispute and is regularly cited alongside losses on Greensill, Katerra and Wirecard as the inflection point that ended the original Vision Fund thesis.