SoftBank Group
SoftBank Group Corp. SoftBank Group Corp. is a Japanese multinational investment holding company headquartered in Minato, Tokyo which 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. Poor investment decisions of Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group led to a panoply of losing investments across the history of the company. SoftBank was ranked in the 2017 Forbes Global 2000 list as the 36th largest public company in the world and the second-largest publicly traded company in Japan after Toyota. 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.
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