Later on the would move away from leveraged buyouts and start investing in startups more similar to how a VC firm would in the US. He notably invested early in Yahoo and Alibaba.
The company is not a sovereign fund - it's really run at the behest of it's founder. If you want to read more about the story, there was recently a great biography that chronicled the story: Gambling Man (https://www.amazon.com/Gambling-Man-Greatest-Disruptor-Masay...)
See what the Japanese government (or old power in Japan) has been spending the money on recently:
- Honda-Nissan merger (failed) - Seven Eleven counter buyout https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/the-fight-for-7-eleven-i...
Masayoshi Son is in a different league, for good or bad.
Investing in SoftBank.
MUFG, the Custody Bank, and Master Trust all have significant ownership stakes in SoftBank, and most Japanese conglomerates like NTT, NEC, etc tend to work closely with SoftBank on strategic deals
It's a whole can of worm I'll only leave here for any else to open, but Son Masayoshi was born in Japan from parents who might have formerly been Japanese (Korea was a Japanese colony) depending on the circumstances.
Many people in similar cases are basically undistinguishable from regular Japanese nationals culturally speaking.
Most people on HN have only heard of SoftBank's Vision Fund, but that's basically an autonomous organization within SoftBank staffed with Deustche Bank alumni who left in droves in 2017-2020.
> Ie is its ultimate goal not merely profit?
Yes. Their goal is profit.
> I've become less and less interested in its investments as it seems to simply act like a giant government money channel with questionable investments that don't seem to make sense from a typical VC/PE perspective
This investment is part of their strategy for 6G and IIoT, which is synergistic with their telecom focus.
There has been work over the past 4-5 years to become the leader for creating the standards for 6G, and SoftBank is trying to position themselves to be that player.
MunichRe is trying the same strategy. You'll see their name in the next 10 years just like SoftBank ;)
But it's so big (maybe biggest in the world), so its reach and influence is immense. And as a result, it has raised money from nations and other enormous entities.
Run by Masa who many consider an oracle because his placed massive bets years before other people and those bets have paid of big.
I'm not sure how many folks these days would consider him an "oracle". He clearly did fabulously well with some early Internet investments, but he also was famous for folly after folly of overpriced investments in the 2010s (the Softbank "Vision Funds").
I'd be curious if there is a simple accounting list of Softbank's major investments ranked from biggest winners to biggest losers. I guess it pretty much highlights the dynamics of the VC business model - you only need a few giant winners to offset the boatload of losers. In Softbank's case, I'm guessing their biggest winners are Yahoo Japan (which was the dominate site in Japan for a long time, and long after the US Yahoo fell into irrelevance) and Alibaba, which saw their early $20 million investment balloon into billions.
But did Softbank have any winners from their 2010s spending spree (along the time where they shoveled good money after bad into WeWork)?
(Though he sold too soon and missed out)
The Vision Fund lost on tons more companies than just WeWork though. But your overall point is correct - there were a couple outsized winners (also just found another article that they made a huge gain on DoorDash) that I'm guessing took care of the majority of their losses.
YC does the same thing at the very early stage, A16Z and Sequoia do the same at later stages, and arguably Softbank made their money doing the same thing at a later stage again, although all the lines are a little blurred.
This isn't the vision fund or any of those VC initiatives from SoftBank.
I'd see this as SoftBank who owns ARM is now buying something useful in the same group / segment to consolidate.
Having said that interest in Japan is at record lows (compared to the rest of the world) so financing is a lot easier.