Aiming High

Anyone trying to understand Silicon Valley right now would do well to look closely at Masayoshi Son, the founder, chairman and chief executive of SoftBank Group. This is the first biography written about him, and it focuses on the investor known to colleagues and the press as Masa.

Son's portfolio includes some of the most talked-about technology companies of recent years, among them Uber, WeWork and ByteDance. Earlier, he was one of the first backers of Alibaba and Yahoo!. The book argues that few figures are better placed than Son to shape the next wave of technology, and that rivals with comparable fortunes, such as Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, lack his mix of ambition, imagination and boldness.

First published in Japan, the book follows Son from his early life as a Korean immigrant who left Japan at sixteen to his rise into the ranks of the world's wealthiest people. Drawing on exclusive interviews and unusual access to Son, it examines how SoftBank Group, and the leader who runs it, is helping to shape the future of technology.