SoftBank Group

SoftBank Group Corp. (ソフトバンクグループ株式会社, SofutoBanku Gurūpu Kabushiki gaisha) is a Japanese multinational investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, that focuses on investment management. The group primarily invests in companies operating in technology that offer goods and services to customers in a multitude of markets and industries ranging from the internet to automation. With over $100 billion in capital at its onset, SoftBank's Vision Fund is the world's largest technology-focused venture capital fund. Fund investors included sovereign wealth funds from countries in the Middle East.

The company is known for the leadership of its controversial founder and largest shareholder Masayoshi Son. Its investee companies, subsidiaries and divisions, including several unprofitable unicorns, operate in robotics, artificial intelligence, software, logistics, transportation, biotechnology, robotic process automation, proptech, real estate, hospitality, broadband, fixed-line telecommunications, e-commerce, information technology, finance, media and marketing, and other areas. Among its most internationally recognizable current stockholdings are stakes in Arm (semiconductors), Alibaba (e-commerce), OYO Rooms (hospitality), WeWork (coworking) and Deutsche Telekom (telecommunications). SoftBank Corporation, its spun-out affiliate and former flagship business, is the third-largest wireless carrier in Japan, with 45.621 million subscribers as of March 2021.

SoftBank was ranked in the 2025 Forbes Global 2000 list as the 130th largest public company in the world.

The logo of SoftBank is based on the flag of the Kaientai, a naval trading company founded in 1865, near the end of the Tokugawa shogunate, by Sakamoto Ryōma.

Although SoftBank does not affiliate itself to any traditional keiretsu, it has close ties with Mizuho Financial Group, its primary lender.

On January 21, 2025, it was announced that Softbank, along with OpenAI, MGX, and Oracle, would launch what was announced to be an artificial intelligence infrastructure system in conjunction with the U.S. government, titled Stargate. The project is estimated to cost $500 billion. U.S. president Donald Trump stated that the infrastructure was developed to have American-made AI in the United States. The project will be funded over the course of the next four years.

SoftBank was founded in September 1981 as SOFTBANK Corp by then-24-year-old Masayoshi Son, initially as a software distributor. The company entered the publishing business in May 1982 with the launches of the Oh! PC and Oh! MZ magazines, about NEC and Sharp computers respectively. Oh!PC had a circulation of 140,000 copies by 1989. It would go on to become Japan's largest publisher of computer and technology magazines and trade shows.

In 1994, the company went public, valued at $3 billion. In September 1995, SoftBank agreed to purchase US-based Ziff Davis publishing for $2.1 billion.