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Masayoshi Son is back on top. On January 22, President Donald Trump announced a joint venture from Sons investment holding company, SoftBank, along with OpenAI and Oracle, to invest billions of dollars in AI infrastructure projects in the U.S. The project, called Stargate, will be chaired by Son. SoftBank is now reported close to finalizing a $40 billion investment in OpenAI at a $260 billion valuation. The news is all the more remarkable for the fact that just three years ago, SoftBank’s venture firm was crumbling following disastrous investments in the likes of WeWork, Wag, and Zume. SoftBank turned things around in 2023 with the successful IPO of Arm, in which it has a controlling stake, and Sononce the most powerful person in Silicon Valleyis riding high again. For the Most Innovative Companies podcast, we spoke with former Financial Times editor Lionel Barber about his new book Gambling Man: The Wild Ride of Japan’s Masayoshi Son. Here, he talks about Sons relationships with Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Steve Jobs, his AI ambitions, and how he got it so wrong with WeWork. Your book came out the day the Stargate deal was announced. After the announcement, Elon Musk claimed on X that SoftBank and OpenAI didnt have the $500 billion they planned to invest. What did you think of that? Elon is wrong. The fact is, Masa does have the moneywe are talking $500 billion over four years. He’s got $40 billion [in cash] on the balance sheet. He’s got some assets that he could sell. He’s got stakes in T-Mobile. He’s got stakes in 500 companies. And he’s also got partners like Sam Altman of OpenAI and [Oracle cofounder] Larry Ellison, who’s worth [around] $230 billion. I think he’s going to have some debt in there as wellmaybe half, maybe 40%? So he’s well on the way to $500 billion. Its real. There’s been a lot of talk about a rivalry between Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Does Elon Musk have any relationship with Son? No, he doesn’t. They did have a meeting around 2017 where Elon [was] thinking about going private and Masa [saw] an opportunity, as he often does. They did have talks, but I think what happened, as so often is the case when it comes to multi-billionaires, is there was a bit of an ego clash as well as a discussion about terms. You’ve got a great story in your book about the initial meeting between Trump and Son in 2016. They had this meeting where Trump hears that Masa is ready to create 50,000 jobs and invest $50 billion in the U.S. economy. And Trump already wants to tweet this out in real time; the meeting doesn’t last very long. Trump retires to his bathroom, straightens his tie, and then combs his hair in a particular meticulous fashion. Then he looks at Masa and says, Look, it’s the little things that matter, so this is the way to comb your hair. He forgot, of course, that Masa is, shall we say, follicly challenged. He doesn’t have a lot of hair. So, there is a surreal moment of billionaire meets billionaire, one with more hair than the other. What do the two men think of each other? They’re both very transactional. Both of them are natural dealmakers, always looking to gain the edge. Therefore, there’s a sort of meeting of minds. Masa is very good at spotting where there’s a likely convergence of interests. When Masa got close to Trump back in 2016, he thought, I want to merge Sprint with T-Mobile. I’m being blocked by those Obama administration people, so maybe I’m going to get a better deal. Now with Trump 2.0, every billionaire in America wants to get close to Trump. What was it like to report the book? Son is famously difficult to pin down. He is a very secretive, private man. He’s very difficult to get to. His travel schedule is always up in the air. He sort of makes it up as he goes along. I decided to do a lot of reporting first before asking for the interview. And I did go to Tokyo twice and was told he was too busy. I decided to leverage my contacts, particularly in America, and go to Silicon Valley, go to Stanford Business School, learn a bit more about venture capital and work those contacts. [I went to] the Sun Valley conference where there were a lot of people who knew Masa. So I had quite a bit of reporting before going there. The second big obstacle was cultural. I don’t speak Japanese. Getting Japanese people to talk is not easy. So, you needed introductions. I found a researcher who was Korean-Japanese, which was very important for helping me understand both the language, translating Japanese manuscripts and texts. The third obvious problem was that you need quite a lot of money to travel around the world. Can you talk about Son’s early life? He became a billionaire without the support of venture capital, private equity, or the capital markets. He came from nothing. His father left school at 14. It’s after the second World War. Japan is devastated, and he’s selling liquor illegally in a Korean-Japanese slum in Kyushu, the western island in Japan. [His family is of Korean heritage.] Then he goes into pig breeding, which is quite a lucrative business in post-war Japan, then loan sharking, then Pachinko, which is slot machine gambling and really part of the underworld economy in Japan. So, Masa comes from that slightly dark side, and he’s got a hustling instinct. But then he does a crucial thing, which is to leave Japan at age 16 and go to America. He spends seven years being educated in high school and then college at Berkeley before he goes back to Japan. So he’s the outsider who speaks English. He can be the middleman. And he marshals all these things to make it as an entrepreneur in Japan. He’s a self-starter. He began with nothing. He created a software distribution business, then became this multi-billionairekind of a Forrest Gump character who’s around every time there’s a sort of big tech transformation. In the book, you talk about how many of Son’s own countrymen had an almost dismisive view of him, despite his wealth and success. Is that still the case today? Son is an object of suspicion still in corporate Japanand envy, because he is the richest man in Japan alongside Uniqlo’s Tadashi Yanai, who was on the board of SoftBank for nearly 20 years. He’s also an object of suspicion because he doesn’t actually make anything. He’s sort of a financial engineer and middleman. Also, he’s Korean-Japanese. And the fact is, there is still endemic prejudice by Japanese against Koreans. Son is known for making gigantic investments. He offered Yahoo! cofounder Jerry Yang $100 million in 1995, when Yang wasnt seeking it. More recently, he gave WeWork cofounder Adam Neumann more than $16 billion. What drives him to make these outsize bets? He’s a master of destabilization as a negotiating technique. So, [he] kind of comes up with a huge number, and then if you don’t accept it, he says, “Take it or I’ll kill you.” He says, “If you don’t take it, what’s your greatest competitor? We’ll put the money there.” One of my favorite moments is when he’s trying to hire Nikesh Arora from Google. They’re negotiating the contract and the money, the remuneration package on a napkin, and he puts these huge numbers with [a lot of] zeros. That’s what he does. It’s a theatrical flourish. Lastly, Son sort of says, “I’m going to be bigger than you ever imagined and I’m going to say things that are so outrageous that you kind of almost feel the fear of missing out.” He plays on that, and he did it very effectively when he was raising tens of billions in the Gulf, and he got the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to hand over $45 billion. You finally did get to interview Son. What is he like on a personal level? Much quieter and less theatrical. Much more reflective. I think he really wanted me to understand or try and appreciate him as a historical figure. He has a great deep sense of history and he thinks of himself as an empire builder like Napoleon and Genghis Khan and Emperor Chin who built the Great Wall of China. This is the kind of scale and context that he thinks about. He is also a slightly sad character. I thought that this is a man who never is quite fulfilled. I describe him not as Icarus overreaching, but more like Sisyphus pushing this boulder up the hill, and then it’s somehow always incomplete. This is why this next AI act is so important for him. He also operates on centuries-long time horizons. He’s claimed that he’s going to live to 120. Is that just bluster or does he actually believe in this kind of long-range planning? It has more than an element of seriousness to it. What he’s trying to convey to investors and his workforce is that we have to think about the future [and have a] longer-term perspective. Now, when you hear 300 years, you and I kind of go, what? But as I explain in the book, some Japanese companies literally do go back several hundred years. On the plus side, you could say that insight helped him understand the sweep of technological innovation that we’ve seen since the launch of the microchip. He’s ridden that wave. On the other hand, when you look at some of his trading, [it’s] not exactly 300-year stuff. He clearly traded out of Nvidia in 2018, and missed out big time. But he kept Alibaba stock all that time and turned a $100 million bet into $120 billion. Speaking of Alibaba, at one point you quote Son saying that Jack Ma had this animal smell. Who are the kinds of entrepreneurs that Son finds himself attracted to? He’s susceptible to founder’s syndrome. So, people who talk big like he does, he’s a bit of a sucker for that. He’s an empire builder. He thinks on a grand scale, and that’s what puts him in a special category. And it’s why he elevates people who think and talk the same language. Obviously sometimes you’re going to miss badly. Who are the employees he wants to hire within SoftBank? With people around him, [it’s like], he’s married one day and divorced the next. Succession is still an issue. But you have to distinguish between hired guns Rajeev Misra, the ex-Deutsche Banker who ran the SoftBank Vision Fund comes into that category, and Marcelo Claure, [former CEO of SoftBank Group International]from this loyal cadre of people in Japan. These Japanese executives are paid a lot less than these grand mercenaries. I put them in a different category. What can you say about Sons current succession plan? An executive asked him about that and he said, I don’t have any sons. And the executive looked at him and thought to himself, well, you do have two daughters. So, that tells you something. It’s not going to be in the family. I think he’ll be carried out in a box. And what happens to SoftBank? I mean, the question is, does it get broken up? Sons been talking about AI for decades. When did he first get interested in it? Around the turn of the century. I can’t establish whether he actually read Ray Kurzweils book about the singularity, but I certainly know he heard about it. The fascinating thing is, although [Son] talked about the singularity, he didn’t actually invest in a serious and systematic way in deep AI for quite some time. And he kind of missed Sam Altman’s OpenAI. That was partly because of the distraction of the Vision Fund, when he had a $100 billion to spend. He lost a bit of focus. What kind of AI companies is he interested in investing in? All he talks about is artificial general intelligence or artificial super intelligence. You have to take this more seriously now. He’s invested a lot in the robotics area and he’s talking about really investing in the infrastructure around artificial intelligence, which means energy and large language model training. He’s got energy assets and he’s got the kind of design expertise with Arm. I think he’s serious about developing a superchip to rival Nvidia. Im not going to ask you what well see from SoftBank 300 years from now, but what can we expect in the next five years? Stargate is real. I think you’ve only seen chapter one in maybe act one, four acts. We’re going to see more detail about the energy side. We’re going to see more about the super chip. We’re going to hear a lot more about Arm and its central role in this venture. And then I think you’ll hear a bit more about the portfolio. He may sell, by the way: He’s got stakes in 500 companies. I think he’s going to sell down to raise cash partly for this. And then you may see some IPO business. And overall I predict we’ll have the rehabilitation of Masa Son, the man that everybody was willing to write off in 2022. It will be his fifth comeback from the dead.
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Picture this: Youre driving on a crowded highway, preparing to change lanes and pass a tractor-trailer. As you check your mirrors, a loud chime on your cars infotainment screen rings out. Its Google Maps, asking whether a stalled car is still on the shoulder, as other drivers have reported. A prompt appearsYes or Norequiring a response within seconds. Your already taxed brain now has another decision to process, all while youre moving at 60 miles per hour. Scenarios like this became possible last summer, when Google overhauled its popular navigation app. Since then, drivers using Google Maps frequently receive prompts to confirm an incident, such as a police vehicle or stalled car, that other users have flagged. These prompts are announced with a chime as well as text and a timer that consume the bottom chunk of the app display. If there is a way to turn off this incident verification feature, I havent found it. (A Google spokesperson did not respond when I asked.) These prompts can be annoying to drivers who find them intrusive. More troublingly, experts in UX and human factors worry that they will cause distraction that leads to crashes. If the request happens on a stretch of road where there isn’t that much one going around you, its probably not a problem, said Birsen Donmez, a professor of industrial engineering at the University of Toronto who researches distracted driving. But if it pops up when you know your turn is coming up and you really need to focus, it could confuse you and divert your attention. Thats an unsettling problem for the hundreds of millions of people who use Google Maps, as well as for everyone who shares the road with them. ‘This is an irrelevant piece of information’ Google has dominated navigation since launching Maps in February 2005. Though competitors have appearedApple, MapQuest, and TomTom GO among themnone has come close to matching Googles user base. In 2013, Google solidified its lead by acquiring the Israeli startup Waze, whose crowdsourced traffic and incident reporting technology later shaped key features of Maps even though it remained a separate app. Today, Google Maps guides far more journeys than other wayfinding tools. According to a 2024 MarketWatch analysis, 70% of U.S. drivers used Google Maps, compared to just 25% for both Waze and Apple Maps. MapQuest, once ubiquitous, is no longer a market leader but still had 17 million regular users as of 2022. But for the first time in years, Google Maps now faces a credible threat. Fully recovered from an inauspicious 2012 launch, Apple Maps is now a vastly improved service that has garnered praise for design elements like object-based instructions (Turn left after the next traffic light) that can seem more intuitive than Google Maps directions (In 500 feet, turn left). Meanwhile, the iPhonewhich features Apple Maps as its defaulthas been grabbing market share from Android. With competition with Apple Maps intensifying, Google unveiled major revisions to its mapping tool last summer. Google Maps had already invited users to submit information about observed traffic incidents, which the company would then share with other drivers. Now, with its new update, the company announced, other drivers can confirm the incident with just a tap. What that means in practice is that drivers frequently hear a chime as a question appears on their infotainment screen, such as Stalled vehicle reported 51 minutes ago from Google Maps drivers. Is this still there? A countdown progress bar pushes drivers to quickly tap a Yes or No button. It makes you feel like you have to respond or get it off of your screen, said Kate Moran, vice president for research and content at Nielsen Norman Group, a UX advisory practice. After a few seconds the prompt disappears, either because the driver answered the question or because the timer hit zero. Innocuous though it may seem, demanding just a tap can be dangerously distracting, University of Torontos Donmez said, because infotainment touchscreens inevitably require users to look away from the roadway ahead. She added that inexperienced or elderly drivers are more likely to struggle to suppress irrelevant stimulus. Donmez is particularly concerned by the urgency of Google Maps requests for confirmation. Drivers typically modulate their distraction engagement based on whats coming up on the road, and thats why crashes dont happen, she said. For instance, many drivers instinctively wait until after completing a lane change before they select a new podcast or adjust the air conditioning. But Google Mapss chime and countdown progress bar are designed to demand immediate attention, regardless of road conditions. Defenders of Google Mapss new UX might note that Waze, the other navigation app owned by Alphabet, has long asked users to confirm past reports of traffic incidents. But that doesnt mean Wazes design is safe. In a 2019 paper, a team of Carnegie Mellon researchers noted that Waze is dangerous to not only the driver but also to nearby drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists. When I asked how Google Maps evaluated the safety of its UX update before rolling it out, a corporate spokesperson replied in an email, We take safety very seriously and regularly test our features for driver distraction. According to a corporate blog post, Google Mapss new UX has been distributed globally. The company does not appear to have offered users an option to turn off the verification prompts or limit them to specific types of incidents. One user asked on the Google Maps Community forum how to disable the still there? questions while driving, but that query went unanswered. Notably, many of the incidents flagged by Google Maps are unrelated to traffic safety, such as vehicles on the shoulder that passingdrivers often encounter without second thought. Most of the time this is an irrelevant piece of information for safety, Donmez said. Given their potential for annoyance as well as distraction, these prompts shouldnt be inescapable, she said. Some drivers may find the feature useful, she said, but they should have the ability to easily override it. Moran agreed. Its not that the intention behind the feature is bad, but the way it’s been implemented is the problem, she told me. A good experience would be allowing people to say, Dont prompt me with these dialogues anymore. But even better would be to require people to opt in. Instead of turning it on by default, allow people who might be more excited about being in the Google community to say yes, Ill answer these questions and proactively provide data. Instead, all Google Maps users are now being peppered with verification requests, whether they like it or not. ‘It could just be a lack of foresight’ As to why Google Maps changed its UX to request user confirmations, Moran suggests the company probably wants to build a more current dataset of road conditions. If you really want to know if something is still on the road, the fastest way to get that information is to ask the person driving by, she said. But there is another possibility: The prompts unavoidable and aggressive design may be the brainchild of project managers instructed to increase user engagement by any means necessary. People who make UX product decisions are often under lots of pressure to achieve short-sighted, short-term metrics, Moran said. It could just be a lack of foresight that this was going to be distracting or annoying. (Google Maps did not respond to questions about its reasons for demanding that all users confirm road conditions). For now, at least, Google Maps users are stuck with its new UX. It is too soon to know whether the design will increase crashes, but the threat is real, particularly given the apps huge user base. Road safety advocates have already expressed concern about distraction due to increasingly complex infotainment systems, as automakers strive to offer the flashiest designs (even though many car owners find touchscreens woefully inferior to the knobs and dials they replaced). In a 2022 study, researchers at Drexel University concluded that the comparatively simple infotainment systems of the early 2010s were already a statistically significant risk factor for crashes. Yet, infotainment systems remain unregulated in the U.S. In 2012, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued voluntary guidance proposing maximum thresholds for the time drivers must look away from the road to accomplish an infotainment task, but within a few years automakers were routinely violating it. They have paid no penalty for doing so. With the Trump administration reflexively hostile to regulations, new federal safeguards pertaining to navigation tools or infotainment systems are unlikely. Still, Moran thinks that lawsuits involving crashes caused by distracted driving might force Google Maps to change course. The first time I noticed this new feature, I thought Wow, Im surprised their legal team is okay with this, she said. Alternatively, the markets invisible hand might render its own verdict about Googles UX design: Its users can always switch to Apple.
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E-Commerce
In a 2014 commencement address at her alma mater Dartmouth College, TV writer and producer Shonda Rhimes told students, Whenever you see me somewhere succeeding in one area of my life, that almost certainly means I am failing in another area of my life. If I am killing it on a Scandal script for work, I am probably missing bath- and storytime at home. Her comments are true reflections of what work-life balance is, says Janna Koretz, clinical psychologist and founder of Azimuth, a Boston-based provider of therapy services. When people think about balance, they think about it feeling good and being the right amount of everything, she says. I thinkespecially moment to momentthat doesn’t exist. Instead, we should be thinking about how to successfully integrate [the] two things so that most of the time they’re possible. To find the right blend, you need to examine your work life and determine where its negatively impacting your personal life. Koretz shares four common signs: Your identity is too tied to work To know if your work is infringing on your personal life, consider how you would respond if someone asked, Tell me about yourself? Can you say things that arent about work? asks Koretz. A lot of times, [people] can’t come up with anything. They feel, I don’t know who I am, especially if theyve lost their job, and don’t have anything else. If your job becomes your sole identity, its likely crowded out or replaced important things in your personal life. You feel guilty about other commitments Feeling guilty that you’re not doing enough in other realms is another sign that work is creeping into your personal life. For example, you may feel guilty that you have to pick up your kids because you have a lot of work waiting for you back at the office, says Koretz. Its not feeling guilty all the time, but guilty about the choices you’re making, whether they be personal or professional, she says. You’re avoiding small tasks When people think about burnout, they usually think about being exhausted. While Koretz says thats a big part of it, another aspect is avoidance. Avoidance and irritability go hand in hand during burnout, says Koretz. If you are avoiding small tasks at home, such as walking the dog, or at work, such as responding to emails, it could indicate that you dont have enough emotional energy. If there’s too much of this in your life, it’s getting in the way, says Koretz. Life becomes all about little irritants. They grate on you and become a chip on your shoulder. You feel disconnected In addition to avoiding small tasks, you may start disconnecting from activities and interests you normally enjoy, which could be another sign that your emotional energy is drained. You may also feel emotionally disconnected from the people in your life. A lot of people talk about living in a ‘roommate stage’ with their significant other, says Koretz. While people can go through ebbs and flows, its about not knowing what’s going on with your friends, not feeling like you have friends, or not feeling like you can call them with your worries because you haven’t spent a lot of time with them lately. Spending time with friends and hobbies is about finding joy and having more baskets for your eggs, explains Koretz. We are very tribal, social beings; its biological, she says. A World Health Organization study on older adults found that loneliness contributed significantly to cognitive decline and depression and death. How to correct the problem If you recognize yourself, Koretz suggests asking yourself, Why am I unhappy? Go beyond the general reasons, such as feeling like you have too much work to do and dig a little further. Identify your core beliefs and values to make sure your job is still aligned with them. While your work doesnt have to be meaningful 100% of the time, you shouldnt feel like a cog in the wheel all the time, either. A lot of people are doing work that isn’t meaningful to them and that contributes to overwhelm, says Koretz. What motivates people, what brings them joy, is finding meaning. Once you understand what is meaningful to you, make a plan to design your life around it. Koretz says it doesn’t have to be executed right away, nor do you have to make giant strides. Identify small steps you can take and create a career map, figuring out whats possible and when it makes sense. For example, you may decide to keep your high paying job until you pay off your student loans in five years. Knowing something isnt forever can make it easier to bear, which Koretz likens to how doctors get through the burdensome schedule of the residency or fellowship stage. Burnout can be due to feeling stuck, says Koretz. When you realize you can get out and you have tangible steps, you can become excited about where youre heading, and that changes the dynamic so you can be better at integrating your personal and work life.
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