It’s like knowing about ICBC, the largest bank in the world but most people have never seen a branch of it.
Couple that with them being like an investment firm outside of Japan. They could be as obscure as Berkshire, a big player, but one most consumers don’t come into contact with.
A bit of regionalism and a bit of not paying attention. They were getting going doing some local stuff (in Japan) in the early 90s when I lived there - much like ASCII was. And Sega, a bit, I guess, as they were trying to re-re-invent themselves.
They came to America (SV) about the time I got back to America - they invested in yahoo.com, and Rob Glaser's real.com, and about 100 others. Not huge amounts or huge stakes by today's standards - but still significant. They never seemed to be quite as discriminating as some of the big-name VCs that you probably know, but 1995 (or so) through 1998 (or so) was a reasonably reasonable time to be spreading your bets across the entire table.
It was you not paying attention. Softbank has been doing this at a big level for ~23 years now.
They had a $40 billion stake in Yahoo at the peak of the dotcom bubble (first stake was purchased for $2m in 1995) and had invested into at least a hundred start-ups back then.
1999, Forbes, Master of the Internet
"Venture capitalists scoffed when Christos Cotsakos hit the road in the spring of 1996 to round up $9 million for his fledgling on-line brokerage, E-Trade. It took Masayoshi Son's venture firm just 30 minutes to agree to fork over the funds."
"All told, Son has invested $1.7 billion in more than 100 Internet companies. Softbank and its venture capital arm have sunk $906 million into eight Internet firms that have gone public, an investment now worth $14.1 billion. Son is now about to invest at least $1.2 billion more in the next few months. By Son's count, Softbank holds 7% to 8% of the publicly listed value of all Internet properties"