SoftBank Investment (Part 1): Masayoshi Son's "Golden Egg" Yields Big Profits

SoftBank Group launched a ¥10 trillion Vision Fund in 2017. Fund No. 2 was established in 2019. By the end of September, the combined total investment of the two funds had grown to $163.2 billion (about ¥253 trillion), and pre-tax investment gains reached about ¥37 trillion……

The funds under Japan’s SoftBank Group (SBG), particularly the SoftBank Vision Fund (SVF), have performed strongly. Although it once found itself in trouble, the “golden egg” listing nurtured by chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son has driven SoftBank Group to record new profit highs from April to September 2025. Strong performance from the Vision Fund has strengthened SoftBank Group’s financial muscle, supporting massive investments in artificial intelligence (AI) areas such as the U.S. OpenAI.

“Comrade-style combination”

At a financial results briefing in November, SoftBank Group’s chief financial officer (CFO), Yoshimitsu Goto, said, “After a long time, we’ve finally come into an autumn that makes you let out a breath,” revealing what it felt like internally. This is because, after several years of difficulties such as the U.S. investment target WeWork filing for bankruptcy, the Vision Fund’s investment returns recovered to nearly ¥3 trillion in the consolidated financial statements for July to September.

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The Nihon Keizai Shimbun and the Financial Times merged in November 2015 to become part of the same media group. The alliance formed by two newspapers in Japan and the UK, both originally founded in the 19th century, is moving forward with cooperation across a wide range of areas, with “high-quality, the most powerful business journalism” as its banner. This time, as part of that effort, there has been an exchange of articles between the Chinese-language websites of the two newspapers.