Masayoshi Son wants another 10 or 15 years. He told SoftBank shareholders as much at the company’s annual meeting Wednesday in Tokyo. The founder and CEO is 66.
He says he plans to work into his seventies. The goal: artificial superintelligence.
Son has a specific timeline in mind. He asked investors to give him that decade and a half to chase what he calls the stage after artificial general intelligence. He believes it solves problems humanity never imagined it could.
That is a large ask. Shareholders who bought into his vision a decade ago have seen the ride already.
He is asking them to stay on for another one. The bubble question comes up at almost every public appearance now. Son treats it as the problem itself.
To talk of a bubble, he said Wednesday, is an insult to AI. He has called bubble talk “blasphemy” before. He has dismissed the people raising it as “not smart enough, period.” The man who has bet more of SoftBank’s balance sheet on a single thesis than almost any investor alive does not entertain the counterargument.
He waves it away. There is a number behind the defiance.
Son told CNBC in Paris earlier in June that the AI revolution is “more than 10x, probably 50x bigger” than the dot-com boom. That boom ended in a spectacular bust. Son is betting this one runs for decades.
The AI surge has driven his fortune to record highs. The sceptics want to know whether it is a bubble waiting to deflate.
He calls the question an insult. The meeting in Tokyo was the annual shareholders’ gathering. A reporter asked the familiar question.
Son reached for elevated language again. This was not the first time. He does not engage the counterargument so much as dismiss it.
For all the noise about frothy valuations, the salient point for Son is that he sees the current moment not as a peak but as the early innings of something far larger. SoftBank has staked enormous sums on that conviction.
Son has put more of his company’s balance sheet behind a single thesis than almost any living investor. He does not hedge. He does not entertain the possibility he is wrong.
The bubble talk is an insult. It is blasphemy.
The people raising it are not smart enough. Period. Son’s timeline is specific.
Another 10 or 15 years. That would put him in his late seventies or early eighties. He is asking shareholders to stay on for the ride.
They have seen the ride already. A decade ago he sold them on a vision.
That vision has produced record highs for his fortune. It has also produced volatility. Son is asking them to stay on for another one.
The scale of the opportunity, in Son’s telling, dwarfs the dot-com era. He says it is 10 times bigger, probably 50 times bigger.
The dot-com boom reshaped the global economy. Then it collapsed. Son is betting the AI revolution runs for decades.
He is betting it does not collapse. He is betting it is just beginning. The bubble question will keep coming up.
It comes up at almost every public appearance now. Son will keep waving it away.
He will keep calling it an insult. He will keep asking for 10 or 15 more years. Shareholders who bought into his vision a decade ago have seen the ride.
He is asking them to stay on for another one.
