Masayoshi Son goes messianic: It's past time to boycott SoftBank

Editor’s note: It's nearly impossible to comprehend why the average Japanese SoftBank (a "bank for software") customer in Japan tolerates SoftBank's ruthless corporate tactics. Many Japanese people have had really bad experiences with SoftBank and it always amazes observers when you go into a SoftBank shop and complain, the employees will never talk bad about the corporation that employs them. That's to be expected naturally, yet the customers and the employees both know just how ruthless this company is. The SoftBank employees will politely smile when trying to assist you hiding all this behind their smiles.
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SoftBank and the Cost of Tech Vanity: When AI Ambition Becomes Corporate Predation

February 2, 2026 | AD News Network 

As these predatory corporations like SoftBank continue dropping billions into AI projects, stop and consider what Elon Musk stated recently that apparently really upset him about AI. He said, "If I could, I would certainly slow down AI and robotics, but I can't." Sure thing Elon, right.

SoftBank has built its corporate identity around deploying enormous amounts of capital with unusual speed and concentration, prioritizing scale and dominance over financial caution. He probably did it for the glory of Japan and lost big time. We offer the following about SoftBank:

SoftBank led by founder Masayoshi Son, deliberately builds its corporate identity around huge, concentrated bets on technology companies, often at premium valuations. Rather than diversified, disciplined venture investing, the strategy emphasizes rapid capital deployment into companies that are loss-making but magnetically compelling because of growth potential.

Despite years of volatility, SoftBank continues to commit massive resources to AI and related sectors, indicating that its appetite for excessive, high-stakes bets remains intact. SoftBank's investment playbook prioritizes ambition over conventional financial caution, a corporate posture that can be described as aggressive or ruthless in pursuit of strategic supremacy.

As a more recent example, in 2025, SoftBank laid off 20% of its Vision Fund staff as it pivoted back to capital-intensive artificial intelligence investments, including a planned $500 billion "Stargate" AI infrastructure project. This pivot occurred after massive losses forced earlier retrenchment, yet the firm chose again to pursue extremely ambitious spending rather than restraint. The $500 billion "Stargate" AI infrastructure project much touted by the usual techno gurus is a grand vision that will likely be gradually implemented if at all as the risks are externalized and ordinary customers and workers find out they will likely have to pay for it. $500-billion projects like this built on hype, leverage, and messianic leadership rarely survive contact with reality.

SoftBank has built a reputation not just as a high-risk investor but as a company that treats its own customers like an afterthought. Its Vision Fund threw insane amounts of money at startups like WeWork, without regard for sustainable business fundamentals, fueling bubbles that then crash and leave users and workers to deal with the fallout. Its massive backing of companies like WeWork, Uber, and others has resulted in billions of dollars in losses as valuations collapsed and business models faltered, exposing how reckless its strategy often is. Analysts have pointed out that SoftBank's playbook prioritizes big splash deals over sound due diligence, and its leaders often double down on ambitious bets even after repeated setbacks.

Meanwhile, people who actually use SoftBank's services, from mobile plans to internet, regularly report being trapped in confusing contracts, hit with unexpected charges, or forced to waste hours on the phone or in stores just to fix problems the company caused. Many customers in Japan have spent hours in a SotBank store trying to cancel their SoftBank contracts.

Japanese SoftBank customers most often complain about confusing contracts, rigid cancellation rules, and a customer-service system that feels designed to exhaust rather than help. Many report being hit with unexpected fees when trying to cancel mobile or internet services, including penalties triggered by narrowly defined contract windows or obscure procedures they say were never clearly explained. Billing errors and charges continuing after cancellation are another frequent grievance, forcing customers to spend hours on the phone or make repeated visits to SoftBank shops just to resolve basic issues. Even when problems are caused by faulty equipment or service outages, customers say SoftBank's response is often inflexible, with staff citing policy rather than offering solutions. Over time, this has created a widespread sense of powerlessness: customers feel trapped by fine-print terms, long wait times, and bureaucratic processes that prioritize corporate rules over customer time, money, and trust.

Even SoftBank's internal responses sometimes feel tone-deaf: rather than fixing customer service problems at the root, they've toyed with AI that softens angry callers' voices instead of actually addressing why customers are upset in the first place. It's the equivalent of plastering over the wound rather than treating the infection, and that's how lots of long-time customers describe their experience. Many customers have had to sit on the phone for sometimes 30 minutes at a time or more waiting for a SoftBank representative to answer the call in. That is thirty minutes of a customers time SoftBank could give a shit about. Now multiply that by 100 customer calls a day.

On the investment side, SoftBank's strategy has not only hurt its own balance sheet, with huge losses in its Vision Fund, but also distorted entire markets, encouraging startups to chase growth at all costs and then watch them implode or struggle under unsustainable business models. For people paying attention, it's hard to separate the glamor of "visionary tech investing" from the very real consequences of a corporate culture that consistently bets big with other people's money , and when things go bad, it's often customers and workers left to clean up the mess. One more reason to boycott SoftBank to send this corporate predator a message.

According to Reuters, SoftBank Group is in talks to invest up to an additional $30 billion in OpenAI, the U.S. artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, as part of a much larger funding round that could total around $100 billion (another "game changer") and value OpenAI at roughly $830 billion. SoftBank has already been increasing its stake in OpenAI and completed about $22.5 billion in additional funding at the end of last year, bringing its ownership to roughly 11 percent of the company. The new investment discussions, reported by The Wall Street Journal and confirmed by sources, show SoftBank's continued prioritization of massive AI bets. The company itself declined to comment. Critics see this as another example of SoftBank's aggressive strategy of doubling down on speculative AI ventures that may deliver prestige but carry significant financial risk, a pattern that has repeatedly exposed the firm to volatility and raised questions about whether its pursuit of headline-grabbing tech dominance is disciplined or sustainable.

Masayoshi Son's most damaging decisions were probably driven by vanity and a messianic self-belief that he was destined to lead humanity into the AI age and place Japan at its center. Son repeatedly framed himself not just as a CEO, but as a historical figure shaping civilization's future, casting SoftBank as the chosen vehicle for that mission. His stunted worldview encouraged reckless, oversized bets, an extraordinary tolerance for losses, and the sidelining of normal governance and risk controls. Rather than producing lasting AI leadership, the strategy resulted in repeated failures, massive write-downs, and eroded investor trust, pissed off SoftBank customers all suggesting that SoftBank's direction became less about sound business and more about fulfilling a personal prophecy.