The first days of the second Trump administration offered the newly elected president a chance to share the spotlight with some of his most important allies. While some of the featured leaders were ones you’d expect—cabinet nominees, congressional leaders, megadonor Elon Musk—at least one was a surprise: Masayoshi Son, the Japanese billionaire tech investor.

The occasion for Son’s star turn in the White House Roosevelt Room on Jan. 21 was an announcement that SoftBank Group, Son’s Tokyo-based conglomerate, would put up most of the funding for Stargate, an ambitious partnership with OpenAI and Oracle that aims to turbocharge American leadership in artificial intelligence. Flanked by Oracle chairman Larry Ellison and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and standing on a box to be seen above the lectern, Son promised Trump that Stargate would invest a staggering $500 billion to build a nationwide network of data centers, power plants, and research centers. Trump lavished praise on “my friend Masa” for bankrolling “the largest AI infrastructure by far in history.”

“This the beginning of a golden age for America,” Son told Trump. “We wouldn’t have decided [to invest] unless you won.”

It’s also a golden age for gambling on AI, and Son seems determined to be the table’s highest roller. SoftBank is leading a funding round of $40 billion for OpenAI, valuing it at $260 billion, in what could be a record single round for a private company. If finalized, that investment would position SoftBank as OpenAI’s largest shareholder. Meanwhile, SoftBank and OpenAI are launching a joint venture to develop and market AI in Japan.

(On March 31, after this story was originally published, SoftBank said it had agreed to lead a funding round of up to $40 billion in OpenAI Global, a for-profit subsidiary of the ChatGPT maker, valuing the company at $300 billion, in what could be a record single round for a private company. SoftBank plans to invest up to $30 billion in the subsidiary, with a syndicate of co-investors providing the remaining $10 billion.)

The surge is all the more striking because in some circles Son is best know for his failures. Indeed, the last time Son loomed so large in global headlines was in 2022, when his Vision Fund posted a $27 billion loss and teetered on the brink of collapse. Among its most spectacular debacles: office-sharing startup WeWork, for which the fund was forced to write down $14 billion.

But the comeback is vintage Son. Over the years, he has made and lost larger fortunes than perhaps any investor in the history of capitalism. From his early days as a scrappy software distributor, Son has demonstrated a flair for grand gestures, an unshakable faith in charismatic young founders with big ideas—and the capacity to bounce back from failed bets. It’s not far fetched to compare him to a daruma, a traditional Japanese doll that’s a symbol of perseverance. Daruma dolls have heavy, weighted bases; like America’s Weebles, they wobble but don’t fall down.

The wobble-and-rebound pattern has recurred throughout Son’s career—and each boom-and-bust cycle has seemed to leave his financial base more solid. SoftBank’s first big success was a bet on Yahoo, darling of the dotcom boom, which cemented Son’s reputation as a venture visionary and made him, briefly, the world’s richest man. Then Yahoo made a string of strategic errors, the boom went bust, and SoftBank’s market capitalization plummeted from more than $180 billion to $2.5 billion, a decline of 98%.

Son clawed his way back thanks to a $20 million investment, made just a month before the dotcom crash, that gave SoftBank a 34% stake in a then obscure Chinese e-commerce startup, Alibaba. Son famously claims to have decided to invest based on pure gut instinct after a six-minute meeting with founder Jack Ma. “It was the look in his eye, it was ‘animal smell,’” he recalled years later.

At its peak in 2020, SoftBank’s Alibaba stake was worth more than $200 billion, enabling SoftBank to borrow money for investments in hundreds of other ventures. In Japan, the company pioneered the expansion of high-speed internet and broadband, just in time to serve one of the world’s most tech-savvy younger generations. In 2006 SoftBank acquired Vodafone Japan, later rebranding it as SoftBank Mobile, a game-changing move that effectively put Son in control of one of Japan’s top telecom providers. That success paved the way for SoftBank to buy a majority stake in Sprint, which Son later merged with T-Mobile, creating the third-largest U.S. mobile carrier.

Son’s luck seemed to run out after 2017 when he launched the $100 billion Vision Fund, the world’s largest tech investment fund, with major backing from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The fund’s myriad wipeout losses eventually forced Son to unload many of SoftBank’s assets, including the bulk of its stake in Alibaba.

But if Son is unnerved by these gyrations, he has rarely shown it. He lives in a lavish mansion in Tokyo’s pricey Azabu Juban neighborhood, and in 2019, even as SoftBank’s fortunes were straining under the weight of WeWork’s failed IPO, he took out a personal loan from SoftBank to pay $117 million—then the most ever paid for a U.S. residential property—to acquire a sprawling European-style villa in Woodside, in the hills above Silicon Valley.

When it suits him, Son, who displays samurai swords and armor from his personal collection in his office atop SoftBank’s Tokyo headquarters, can be as intimidating as any feudal warlord. Anthony Tan, cofounder of Southeast Asian super app Grab, remembers being summoned to Tokyo for a meeting with Son in 2014. After an hour, Son cut to the chase: He was making Tan an offer he shouldn’t refuse. “You take my money, good for me, good for you,” Tan recalls Son saying. “You don’t take my money, not so good for you.” (Tan took the money.)

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has offered a succinct explanation for why tech CEOs have made countless 11-hour flights from San Francisco to Tokyo to meet with Son: “Rather than having their capital cannon facing me, I’d rather have their capital cannon facing behind me.”

Son’s cannon may have misfired at Vision Fund. But what enabled him to reload is the success of another singular investment: British chip designer Arm Holdings, which SoftBank took private in 2016. Since September 2023, when SoftBank listed Arm on the Nasdaq, its market cap has soared to nearly $120 billion, enabling SoftBank to pledge some of its 90% stake as collateral to take on debt.

SoftBank will need that new ammunition. For Stargate, SoftBank has pledged to provide $19 billion of the initial $52 billion in funding commitments for the venture in exchange for a 40% stake. In mid-March, it splashed out $6.5 billion to buy Ampere Computing, a U.S. chip designer focused on AI compute. Softbank’s overall AI spending commitments far exceed the $31 billion in cash it had on its balance sheet at the end of last year. The Information reports that SoftBank is in talks with bankers to borrow $16 billion to invest, in addition to $18.5 billion it recently arranged to borrow, secured by its Arm stake.

The larger question looming over the Stargate bet is whether it will be worth the returns. On Jan. 27, only six days after the White House ceremony, global investors woke up to reports that DeepSeek, a little-known startup based in Hangzhou, China, had developed an AI model that performs as well as or better than OpenAI’s leading model but requires far less memory and guzzles far less electricity. DeepSeek said it developed the model for less than $6 million, a fraction of the billions Big Tech companies say they are spending on their models.

The “DeepSeek shock” challenged prevailing assumptions about the correlation between how AI models perform and how much they cost. But much of the tech community sees those doubts as a distraction from a bigger truth—that growing demand for AI will create a voracious need for power and hardware, even if AI models themselves become more efficient. Altman has argued in a paper on the OpenAI website that “infrastructure is destiny.”

Clearly, the huge estimates of what it will cost to build that infrastructure don’t scare Son. “Some people say, after the DeepSeek syndrome, ‘Oh, you are overspending,’” he said shrugging at a February appearance with Altman at a SoftBank conference in Tokyo. “‘You know, you can save so much more by spending less.’ But I think you are looking at it the wrong way…How much of global GDP will be replaced by something a billion times smarter?”

Son estimates that within a decade, AI-driven solutions will replace at least 5% of global GDP, and potentially as much as 10%: “You shouldn’t be scared of spending a few trillion dollars if it returns $9 to $18 trillion per year. Why should you try to be efficient? For what? I don’t get it.”

At the same event, Son reminisced about past meetings with Altman. In 2017, Altman came to Tokyo looking for funding, but Son sent him away empty-handed. Two years later, as OpenAI developed one of the world’s most sophisticated AI models, Son offered to invest $1 billion in the venture. This time Altman refused.

Onstage, Son had a rosier recollection of the 2019 encounter: “You said that you’re going to go for AGI [artificial general intelligence]. I immediately said, ‘I believe you. I want to invest.’ From there I was a believer. I never doubted. Most people at that time thought you were crazy, right?”

“Some people think you’re crazy too,” Altman replied. “It all works out.”

This article appears in the April/May 2025 issue of Fortune with the headline “The nine lives of Masayoshi Son.”

A gambler at tech’s highest-stakes tables

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Shake Shack founder Danny Meyer has high standards for new hires: Even if they are highly capable, a lack of hospitality skills like integrity and work ethic can still cost them the job.

As the founder of the now 510-location-strong Shake Shack, Danny Meyer has helped hire thousands of the best burger flippers and milkshake creators. However, he scrutinizes talent much more intently than you may expect.

Even if someone appears highly capable, they may not be cut out for the job at one of Meyer’s restaurants if they lack what Meyer calls “hospitality quotient,” or HQ.

“I really don’t give a damn what your IQ is,” Meyer told Fortune’s Jason Del Rey at the Qualtrics X4 Summit. 

“What an IQ basically says is one’s aptitude for learning. What HQ is, is the degree to which someone is happier themselves when they provide happiness for someone else.”

The top 6 emotional skills that will get you hired, according to Meyer

Meyer, who has spent 40 years in the restaurant business and currently serves as executive chairman of Union Square Hospitality Group, added there are six green flags that he looks for above all else:

• Integrity
• Optimism
• Intellectual curiosity
• Work ethic
• Empathy
• Self-awareness

Having these skills will not only help an employee stand out in the hiring process but also equip them to climb the ladder even faster with a “learn-it-all” attitude, he said. 

While Meyer’s list of skills may seem like an obvious goal of any aspiring business leader, the restaurant industry has long struggled to find and retain top talent. Plus, Gen Z isn’t making it any easier as questions around their work ethic remain.

They would do well to remember that attitude is often more important than skills. Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy has gone so far as to say attitude can be the true make-or-break in business—and contribute an “embarrassing” amount to one’s success, especially early in your career.

“I think people would be surprised how infrequently people have great attitudes,” he said. “I think it makes a big difference,” Jassy said in an interview with LinkedIn’s CEO Ryan Roslansky.

Other hospitality business leaders have also shared similar sentiments that surface-level skills won’t always cut it. Chris Kempczinski, the CEO of McDonald’s, wrote last year that while characteristics like expertise, experience, and professionalism are important, demonstrating company values and culture—especially in difficult situations—may be even greater.

“I want to see real examples of a leader living our values: serve, inclusion, integrity, community, and family,” he said.

Hospitality skills may even outweigh a college degree

Meyer is so serious about the importance of hospitality skills in any successful business that he has said that on-the-job passion is even more important than a candidate’s college degree. 

Last year, Meyer said that graduates should consider tuning out their college major in favor of what they actually want to do.

“You learned a lot; there’s no question about that, and nobody can ever take that away from you. But there may be something else inside of you that really wants to express itself,” he said.

The 67-year-old knows this works because he did it himself. After graduating from Trinity College with a degree in political science, he nearly went to law school. Instead, he listened to his gut and learned to become “his own boss”—and grew Shake Shack from a temporary hot dog cart in Madison Square Park in Manhattan into the $3.8 billion chain it is today.

“As you make big choices, while it may be tempting to do the thing others expect you to do, I challenge you to listen carefully to your gut, to follow your passion and heart, and to pursue what you really love,” he said.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

“Liberation Day,” in the words of U.S. President Donald Trump, is coming. The White House will formally unveil new tariffs on both friend and foe on April 2 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time in the Rose Garden, as the president seeks to retaliate against what he sees as mistreatment by the U.S.’s trading partners. 

Many of those trading partners are in Asia, where governments are already trying to prepare for what may be coming.

On Monday, Vietnam—which enjoys a large trade surplus with the U.S.—said it would cut import duties on a range of products including cars, food products, and liquefied natural gas. 

Vietnam has benefited from companies reshoring their supply chains away from China; the Southeast Asian country now has the third-largest trade surplus with the U.S. That’s put it high on the list of countries at risk of steep Trump tariffs—and Hanoi could be preemptively offering concessions to avoid triggering a trade war.

India is also offering to slash import taxes on agricultural products like almonds and cranberries, Reuters reported last week. The South Asian country, which had a $47.5 billion trade surplus with the U.S. last year, is reportedly considering removing some tariffs on imported goods entirely. 

Trump has grumbled about India’s tariffs on U.S. goods, which are higher than what the U.S. imposes on Indian products. The U.S. president has blasted Indian protectionism as “brutal,” even as he heaps praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi. 

‘All countries’

Since coming into office, Trump has imposed an additional 20% tariff on Chinese goods, 25% tariffs on steel and aluminium imports, and 25% tariffs on auto imports.

There are no clear details on the tariffs coming on April 2, such as what level of duties will be imposed and what countries will be affected. Yet on Sunday, Trump suggested that tariffs would hit “all countries” as a starting point, pushing back against earlier reports that new trade measures may be more narrow in scope. 

Many Asian governments are adopting a wait-and-see approach to the tariffs ahead of Wednesday. 

U.S. allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia have tried to negotiate trade issues with Washington—as of now, with apparently little success. 

In mid-March, after failing to secure an exemption from new U.S. steel tariffs, Australia Prime Minister Anthony Albanese complained that the move was “against the spirit of our two nations’ enduring friendship.” On Tuesday, his administration reiterated that they would not offer concessions to the U.S. to get a deal. 

Japan and South Korea are both pledging to offer support to their industries in the event of new U.S. tariffs. “We’re working on this matter nonstop, even on weekends,” Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba said on Tuesday. (New U.S. auto tariffs pose a threat to Japan and its automaking sector.)

Then there’s China, already subject to multiple new tariffs from the Trump administration. Beijing has responded to new import duties with its own measures, ranging from imposing retaliatory tariffs and expanding its “unreliable entities” blacklist. Chinese officials have said that they are ready to fight a “trade war, tariff war, or any other type of war”.

On Sunday, trade ministers from Japan, South Korea, and China held their first economic dialogue in five years. 

Companies getting ready too

In addition to tariffs on steel, aluminum and cars, Trump has promised new levies on semiconductor and pharmaceutical imports as well. 

Asian companies have also promised to invest in the U.S. in a likely bid to avoid new tariffs and show support for Trump’s wish to restore domestic manufacturing. 

In January, Japanese carmaker Honda pledged to increase its investment in three Ohio car plants by $300 million to expand their capability to build EVs, hybrids and internal combustion engine vehicles.  

In March, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), the world’s leading chipmaker, announced a $100 billion investment to expand its operations in Arizona, to be spent over the next four years. (Taiwan’s government is also reportedly considering purchasing more U.S. goods to reduce its trade surplus.) 

Last week, South Korean automaker Hyundai promised to invest $21 billion in American manufacturing, including a $5.8 billion steel plant in the state of Louisiana.

Yet the biggest promise comes from Japan’s Softbank. Earlier this year, Softbank, in partnership with OpenAI and Oracle, promised $500 billion in new investments in U.S.-based AI infrastructure. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com