Founded in 1981 by entrepreneur Masayoshi Son, the group launched their first Vision Fund (at $90+ billion) in 2016-17, making it the largest tech-based investment fund in the world. In 2019, the second Vision Fund was announced. With stakes in many major platform-app companies including Uber, Grab, Rappi, Didi, Ola and Swiggy, SoftBank’s global reach allows it the power to create regional monopolies, positioning itself as a funder that app companies cannot decline.
In 2017, Chinese ride-hailing app Didi tried to turn down an investment from SoftBank, but ended up taking their $5 billion offer after Son hinted at directing the money to a competitor. In the same year, Uber rejected SoftBank’s investment, only to take a $9 billion deal by the end of the year, after Son publicly warned the company that he would invest in Lyft instead. The Vision Fund’s backers have included Microsoft, Apple, Abu Dhabi’s state fund Mubadala, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund and Goldman Sachs.
In 2024, the Vision Fund reported its first annual profit ($4.6 billion) since 2021, after which SoftBank reportedly sold off billions of dollars’ worth of holdings, shifting its focus to semiconductors and Artificial Intelligence. In March 2025, SoftBank reported its first annual profit in four years ($7.78 billion).
In January 2025, United States president Donald Trump announced the Stargate Project — a joint venture created by SoftBank, OpenAI (American AI organisation founded by Sam Altman and Elon Musk), Oracle (American database software company) and MGX (Emirati state-owned AI investment firm), which intends to invest $500 billion over the next four years to build new AI infrastructure with the US government. The venture claims to ‘not only support the re-industrialization of the United States but also provide a strategic capability to protect the national security of America and its allies’. Both OpenAI and Oracle are active players in the US defence market, with the former partnering with defence tech-company Anduril Industries to deploy AI solutions for ‘national security missions’ and the latter launching a programme to help companies sell technology to the US Department of Defence.
