In 2000, Masayoshi Son wired $20 million to a small Chinese e-commerce startup called Alibaba. Everyone called him reckless. That single bet eventually grew into $130 billion. In 2016, he paid $32 billion for ARM – a chip designer most people dismissed as a phone component maker. Today, ARM chips sit inside nearly every AI device built by Nvidia, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Two massive bets. Two massive wins. Son’s strategy has always been the same: buy the future before it becomes obvious, and hold while the world catches up.
Son describes the current AI revolution as 50 times bigger than the dot-com boom, and expects it to drive a technological shift lasting 50 to 100 years. Most investors hear that kind of language and assume it’s hype. Son hears it and starts writing checks. Pluang
His current obsession is physical AI – artificial intelligence that operates in the real world through machines and robots. Over the past two years, he has quietly assembled every critical piece of that industry. In October 2025, SoftBank agreed to acquire ABB Robotics for $5.375 billion, with the transaction expected to close in mid-to-late 2026. He also holds a major stake in OpenAI and controls ARM, which powers roughly 90% of the world’s mobile architecture. Son’s approach here is deliberate: he doesn’t pick one winner inside a trend. He buys the entire supply chain. Startup Fortune
Now he’s pulling it all together. SoftBank is planning to create and list a standalone AI and robotics company called Roze, which will focus on building data centers and using robotics to improve the efficiency of AI infrastructure construction – targeting a valuation of about $100 billion. If it lands at that valuation, Roze would become one of the largest pre-revenue listings in technology history. CNBCTech Insider
The timing is deliberate. The United States is short roughly 439,000 construction workers as of late 2025, and satellite imagery suggests up to 40% of AI data center construction sites already face delays. Roze is Son’s answer to that bottleneck – robots replacing the labor wall blocking the global AI buildout. SoftBank has tapped Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Mizuho, and Citi to prepare the IPO, targeting a market debut as early as September 2026. Tech InsiderMSN
Global investment in robotics and physical AI reached $27.6 billion in 2025 – more than double the previous year’s total. Goldman Sachs sees the humanoid robotics market reaching $38 billion by 2035, while Morgan Stanley projects $5 trillion by 2050. Son is not waiting to see which projection turns out to be right. He already owns the chips, the software, the factories, and now the construction infrastructure to shape the outcome directly. TNW | RobotsSahm Capital
“Just the beginning” – Masayoshi Son, on the AI revolution, 2026.
The pattern keeps repeating. Son gets called reckless. The world calls him a genius five years later. He lost $70 billion in the dot-com crash and came back with a larger empire than he had before. Most billionaires follow trends. Son builds the infrastructure that makes trends possible. Whether Roze delivers on its $100 billion promise remains to be seen. But one thing is already clear: by the time the rest of the market decides whether to believe him, Son will have already bought the next piece.
