{"id":213439,"date":"2026-09-03T16:46:59","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T16:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/213439\/"},"modified":"2026-09-03T16:46:59","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T16:46:59","slug":"softbanks-masayoshi-son-becomes-asias-richest-person-amid-ai-boom-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/213439\/","title":{"rendered":"SoftBank\u2019s Masayoshi Son Becomes Asia\u2019s Richest Person Amid AI Boom"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Open<\/a> SoftBank Group’s Masayoshi Son. <\/p>\n

SoftBank Group’s Masayoshi Son<\/a> has become the richest person in Asia amid the AI boom. Market euphoria has propelled shares of the Tokyo-listed investment giant to a record high, making it Japan’s most valuable company by market capitalization on Monday, overtaking automaker Toyota Motor. <\/p>\n

The 68-year-old mogul now has a net worth of $97 billion, largely derived from his SoftBank stake, according to Forbes estimates. He has surged past Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani<\/a>, whose fortune stands at $90 billion, to become the richest person in Asia, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List<\/a>. <\/p>\n

With a market cap now sitting at $298 billion, SoftBank shares have rallied over 80% this year as Son’s AI-related investments boost market sentiment. During a Monday interview with CNBC<\/a>, the mogul said the AI revolution was likely 50 times greater than opportunities in the dot-com era. <\/p>\n

“I think this is like more than 10x, probably 50x bigger than dot-com,” Son was quoted as saying. The previous day, he announced an up-to-\u20ac75 billion ($87 billion) investment in AI infrastructure such as data centers across France. <\/p>\n

And as AI-related demand is expected to increase further, SoftBank’s portfolio companies are also surging to lift the share price of the parent company. The primary catalyst for the rally is Nasdaq-listed chip maker Arm Holdings, where the Japanese conglomerate owns an almost 90% stake, according to Dan Baker, senior equity analyst at research firm Morningstar. <\/p>\n

The British firm, whose own shares went up by over 250% this year, forecasted on Tuesday that the company may achieve its $15 billion chip sales target ahead of schedule. In March, when Arm unveiled its first in-house chip that marks a shift from just licensing chipmaking technologies, the company also predicted that it would sell that many self-made chips in about five years. And total annual revenues would reach $25 billion by then, according to Arm’s own predictions, representing a more than six-fold increase from what it earned in 2025. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, investors are betting that OpenAI, the ChatGPT creator in which SoftBank has invested over $30 billion, might become even more richly valued. Led by billionaire Sam Altman<\/a>, OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in late March after raising $122 billion from investors including Amazon, Nvidia and the Japanese conglomerate. <\/p>\n

The American AI giant may now be in an arms race with fast-growing rival Anthropic to go public, as each seeks to attract more capital by leveraging early mover advantages. SoftBank, which has committed to invest at least another $20 billion in OpenAI by October, stands to benefit if the value of the American behemoth rises further. OpenAI might reach a valuation of about $1 trillion in a public debut, amid market exuberance over mega offerings such as the forthcoming listing of billionaire Elon Musk’s<\/a> SpaceX, which is reportedly seeking to raise $75 billion, according to Hironori Akizawa, Tokyo-based senior fund manager at Tokio Marine Asset Management. <\/p>\n

And Son, despite his AI commitments, has so far managed to maintain financial discipline. SoftBank’s leverage, as measured by loan to asset value, has decreased to 17% from 18% during the fiscal fourth quarter, according to a May research note from Morningstar. The company has a self-imposed leverage limit of 25%, as its heavy borrowing once caused significant market concerns. <\/p>\n

But Deutsche Bank analyst Peter Milliken cautions in a Tuesday research note that it won’t entirely be smooth sailing. OpenAI faces stiff competition from Anthropic, which has surpassed OpenAI to reach a valuation of $965 billion following a May funding round. Cheaper, open-source AI models are also gaining popularity globally, potentially hurting OpenAI’s sales growth. <\/p>\n

“[SoftBank’s] been a great run, based mainly on savvy investing, and partly on a bull market that has increasingly shown signals of entering a mania,” the analyst wrote. “Analysts and investors appear to us to have become fixated on short-term momentum, and less interested, or unable, to map out the long-term trajectory with detailed assumptions.” <\/p>\n

This article was originally published on Forbes.com<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SoftBank Group’s Masayoshi Son. SoftBank Group’s Masayoshi Son has become the richest person in Asia amid the AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[157],"tags":[594,1060,2227,2414,8453,17974,1197,682,10316,11926,17348,613,2138,5194,95525,178],"class_list":["post-213439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-masayoshi-son","tag-ai","tag-american","tag-arm-holdings","tag-asia","tag-forbes","tag-japanese","tag-march","tag-masayoshi-son","tag-may","tag-monday","tag-morningstar","tag-openai","tag-softbank","tag-son","tag-the-previous-day","tag-tuesday"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117208130793861120","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}