SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son is asking his shareholders for another decade, maybe 15 years. He told them at the annual meeting in Tokyo on Wednesday that he intends to keep working into his seventies. The goal: artificial superintelligence.
That is the stage he believes comes after artificial general intelligence, the point where machines solve problems humanity cannot even imagine yet. Son put a number on it earlier this month in Paris.
The AI revolution, he told CNBC, is “more than 10x, probably 50x bigger” than the dot-com boom. The beginning of a shift that could run for decades. That is the bet his shareholders are being asked to ride.
Shareholders who bought into his vision a decade ago have already seen the ride. He is asking them to stay on for another one.
The question at the meeting was familiar — someone asked whether the AI surge is a bubble. It comes up at almost every public appearance now. The surge has driven his fortune to record highs.
The skeptics want to know if it will deflate. Son treated the question itself as the problem. To talk of a bubble, he said, is an insult to AI.
It was not the first time he used that kind of language. He has previously called bubble talk “blasphemy” and 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. The consequences for SoftBank shareholders are straightforward. They are being asked to ignore 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. The dot-com boom was big.
This one, in his view, is 50 times bigger. That is the scale of the opportunity he is selling. For the broader market, the fallout is less clear.
Son’s track record is uneven. He bet big on the dot-com boom and lost billions. He bet big on Alibaba and won.
He bet big on WeWork and lost again. Now he is betting bigger than ever on AI.
The question is not whether AI will change things. It is whether the valuations already reflect that change, or something more. Son says they do not.
He says it is an insult to think otherwise. The skeptics say it is a bubble.
Both sides are placing bets. Son is placing his with SoftBank’s money. The skeptics are placing theirs with caution.
What to watch next: Son’s timeline. He asked for another 10 or 15 years. That is a long time to hold a position.
It is also a long time for a market to stay irrational. If he is right, the payoff is enormous.
If he is wrong, the ride down will be as dramatic as the ride up. Shareholders who attended the meeting heard the pitch. They heard the language — insult, blasphemy, not smart enough.
They heard the numbers — 10x, 50x, decades. They heard the request — another decade, maybe 15 years.
Now they decide whether to stay on the ride.
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