I assume Mr. Son is aware the term "dot.com" does not have the best connotations.
From CNBC, June 1:
- Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son told CNBC that the AI revolution will outpace the dot-com boom in the 2000s.
- “This is the biggest revolution of technology and realization that mankind ever experienced,” Son said.
- The Japanese investment giant announced on Friday a 75 billion-euro investment to build AI infrastructure in France.
The AI revolution is 50 times bigger than the dot-com revolution in the 2000s, SoftBank
CEO Masayoshi Son told CNBC Monday.
“I think this is like more than 10x, probably 50x bigger than dot-com,” Son told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal in Paris, a day after the company announced that it’s investing 75 billion euros ($87 billion) to build AI infrastructure in France, including 5 GW of AI data center capacity.
The SoftBank chief said the dot-com crash experienced a painful burst, which proved to be just a small bump in a much bigger long-term growth story.
“This is the biggest revolution of technology and realization that mankind ever experienced, so this is just like the beginning of the internet,” Son added.
Son referenced the fall of auto and electronics stocks in the 1929 Wall Street crash, saying, “There’s always a correction.”....
....MUCH MORE
Possibly related:
March 2008 - Markets, Risk and Gambler's Ruin
June 2012 - Repost: Dreamtime Finance (and the Kelly Criterion)
March 2014 - Expected utility, the Kelly criterion, and transmogrification of truth
November 2019 - SoftBank’s problems aren’t so surprising if you understand this one thing about the company
Throughout the manic phase of SoftBank and the Vision fund there was almost no mention of the fact that at the start of this century Masayoshi Son was the richest person in the word:"But Son’s fairytale didn’t last long. After the dot-com bubble burst, his company Softbank’s shares plunged 75 percent in two months and was 93 percent lower by the end of 2000.
The business almost went bankrupt and Son ended up losing USD 70 billion, the highest ever recorded financial loss for a person in history."
—MoneyControl, October 13, 2017
We had a couple posts around the time of the above that touched on the craziness but not the past history:
SoftBank In Talks To Acquire U.S. Treasury
Sprint, T-Mobile Plunge: SoftBank Calling Off Merger, Will Use Cash to Buy Canada
See also semi-varience, after the jump....
February 2020 - The First Time SoftBank's Masayoshi Son Went Broke
As a side note: If the British government had not refused to allow Nvidia to purchase Arm Holdings, Mr Son would not have had the opportunity to do so and his claim to fame would have been his position as the largest investor in WeWork.
My favorite Son quote was his advice to Adam Neumann of WeWork (Softbank's investment in WeWork eventually totaled $16 billion):
“I told Adam not to be proud that WeWork was growing organically without a large sales force or spending big marketing dollars,” Softbank boss Masayoshi Son told Forbes after Softbank’s first investment in 2017. “Make it ten times bigger than your original plan. If you think in that manner, the valuation is cheap.” He added, “It can be worth a few hundred billion dollars.”
That may be some of the worst career advice ever. But probably not the worst:
an internship at the white house will be amazing on your resume. 😳
— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) July 14, 2019
