SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son: Superintelligence, AI Investing, and the Future of Robotics

Masayoshi Son, Founder, Chairman & CEO, SoftBank Group: Usually I don't do this, okay? But...
 
Christine Anderson, Global Head of Corporate Affairs, Blackstone: You know, we appreciate that. I know you don't.
 
Masayoshi Son: Yeah. Yeah, so this is my respect to you and Steve.
 
Christine Anderson: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Inside Blackstone. I'm Christine Anderson, Global Head of Corporate Affairs, and here's the lineup. First, Rodney Zemmel, Global Head of Blackstone’s Operating Team, joins us for the Monday Morning Meeting. Then, Winfield Sickles is back with the Economic Weather Report. And next, the main event, my late-night conversation with legendary investor Masayoshi Son, Founder, Chairman, & CEO of SoftBank. Masa is renowned for making bold bets ahead of technological change. We discuss what he sees on the horizon and opportunities he believes the world is still underestimating. And finally, Blackstone Chairman, CEO, & Co-Founder, Steve Schwarzman, joins me for the Debrief.
 
Christine Anderson: All right, Rodney, thank you for joining us.
 
Rodney Zemmel, Global Head of the Operating Team, Blackstone: Good to see you, Christine. Thank you for having me.
 
Christine Anderson: All right, well you oversee our operating team. What that means is you go into our companies with your team and try to build value at these companies, try to improve them. So clearly AI, as we both know, driving the conversation and the question for all of us right now is can you implement AI at these companies at scale in a way that improves the value of these companies?
 
Rodney Zemmel: If you'd have asked me here a year ago, I think we would have talked about a lot of pilots and a lot of plans. One of my favorite probably overused jokes of the beginning of the year is: the biggest beneficiaries of AI in 2025 were dogs owned by software developers. So, every good software developer figured out how to use these tools before anyone else did, got their work done 45 minutes faster, and then could go home and walk the dog. So, you know, it's great for pet health, right? We're all for it.
 
Christine Anderson: Not necessarily good for the bottom line.
 
Rodney Zemmel: Exactly.
 
Christine Anderson: Oh my goodness. Yep.
 
Rodney Zemmel: That's not what our CFOs or what our investors want to see. Now, we've got a good number of companies we can point to where how that company works is feeling very different. It's still early days, but we very much see it beginning to have an impact on the performance of the portfolio.
 
Christine Anderson: So which industries are seeing the greatest value created from AI?
 
Rodney Zemmel: Yes, so, all of them? And what surprised me was at the beginning, we started with a strong hypothesis around software and services, right? And of course we spent a lot of time there. What surprised me though, is in pretty much every other industry there is an AI story to be told, right? And, you know, whether it's in industrials, right? With, for example, our company Chamberlain, where we're helping them build a whole new digital access business that wouldn't have been possible without AI. Or whether in our healthcare businesses where you're thinking about everything they need to do from how they handle their data to how they interact with their customers that can be transformed. To real, to our consumer businesses, where the whole world of how consumers find information and make choices is changing dramatically and they really need to be on the forefront of it. And we’re seeing that across industry after industry.
 
Christine Anderson: What does that lead you to believe from a productivity boom standpoint?
 
Rodney Zemmel: Well, I think we're probably already in it. What's different though, from maybe what people thought a couple of years ago is, it's hard, right? So, every company needs to sort of climb over this activation barrier, right? Put real effort in, right? Before they can really…
 
Christine Anderson: Start to…
 
Rodney Zemmel: …get the effort out. Yeah, it takes time. So what does that mean? That means, one, it will take a little longer. Two, not everybody will be able to pull it off. By the way, as investors, we like that, right? The fact that it's hard means that the value once it's created will be a little stickier, right? It won't all get competed away. And maybe, hopefully, we have some differential advantage in creating that value, right? That is what we're aiming for.
 
Christine Anderson: Finally, lessons for any CEOs or leaders that are listening about how they would think about AI implementation?
 
Rodney Zemmel: I'll give you two. Number one, focus. It is not everything everywhere all at once. It's like pick one to two things. And number two, think very carefully about who you're putting in charge. I've never seen this turn into business impact if it is tech-led alone. It needs to be led by business and tech together, working in a super tight, iterative partnership. That's hard, and that takes the right business leaders and time from the CEO themselves.
 
Christine Anderson: Well, fascinating insights. I'm hoping you'll agree to be a regular on the show as this all plays out.
 
Rodney Zemmel: If you'll have me, I'd welcome that.
 
Christine Anderson: Of course, we would love it. And now over to my conversation with Winfield Sickles and the Economic Weather Report.
 
Christine Anderson: Hey Winfield.
 
Winfield Sickles, Co-Head of Global Private Wealth Investment Strategy, Blackstone: Hey Christine.
 
Christine Anderson: Welcome back. All right, a lot has happened in the three weeks since you've been here.
 
Winfield Sickles: Understatement.
 
Christine Anderson: I mean, including the haircut.
 
Winfield Sickles: Maybe also not an understatement.
 
Christine Anderson: Looks good!
 
Winfield Sickles: Thank you.
 
Christine Anderson: All right, the single sentence Economic Weather Report this week, I'm gonna make you do it.
 
Winfield Sickles: Single sentence.
 
Christine Anderson: One sentence.
 
Winfield Sickles: One sentence Economic Weather Report is: corporate borrowing costs are definitely higher and we're paying super close attention to it, but all the drivers of growth, which are born out of this AI infrastructure boom, and then the broadening of that to the rest of the economy is very much intact.
 
Christine Anderson: All right, you can go a little bit deeper now.
 
Winfield Sickles: I can talk more?
 
Christine Anderson: Yeah, you can talk a little bit more about what's behind it.
 
Winfield Sickles: Okay so, Treasury yields, 10 year, through 5.3%. Highest level since 2002, right? Driven by growth, predominantly in our opinion. It's amazing to think that that's happened over six months. That's when yields bottomed and stocks are up almost 20%. Corporate borrowing costs have expanded a little bit, but generally speaking, they're contained. And from our point of view, it's this acceleration in business investment. It's CapEx broadening out in the economy. And then economic data for the most part. Jobs report was a little bit weak, the last one that came out. But, more broadly, the economic data keeps surprising to the top side. And when you look at Q3 GDP estimates, they're running around 3%, which is above trend for the US economy.
 
Christine Anderson: Plus the AI infrastructure build-out, which is contributing to that story.
 
Winfield Sickles: A hundred percent.
 
Christine Anderson: So do you think this can continue?
 
Winfield Sickles: I think so because of what you just said on the AI infrastructure build-out. And I think, also, when you look to the public markets and you look to the earnings trajectory there, Q2, we've had this huge hyperscaler spend, you know, upwards of $800 billion this year, probably over a trillion dollars next year. We're in the middle of Q3 earnings now. We'll see where they deliver. But last quarter, you saw cloud revenue up between 50 to 120% across those names. So it feels like the spend is starting to show up on the other side of the equation.
 
Christine Anderson: Okay, I always have to ask, any data you're seeing from our portfolio companies that tells you what's happening?
 
Winfield Sickles: I think you actually have the data from your great conversation with David Levine last week. We have all this AI infrastructure, but all of a sudden that's now impacting, for example, our logistics business and driving some of the growth that we're seeing there. So I think in terms of our proprietary data and how that broadening is coming to bear, that's a great example. 
 
Christine Anderson: That's great. Well, thank you for being here. And now we're gonna turn to my conversation with Masa Son from SoftBank.
 
Christine Anderson: Masa, welcome to Inside Blackstone. We're so thrilled to have you with us.
 
Masayoshi Son: Yes, thank you very much.
 
Christine Anderson: It’s 11:00 p.m. in New York, and you're joining us from Tokyo. I'm gonna quickly give our listeners just a little bit of your bio before we dive in. You were born in rural Japan to Korean parents. You moved yourself to California at age 16 and then sold your first technology, an electronic translator, while still a student at UC Berkeley. You used the proceeds to found SoftBank in 1981. Then over the next four decades, you developed a reputation for seeing technology shifts before other people. You backed some of the defining companies of the Internet era before making bold bets on the future of artificial intelligence, including massive infrastructure investments and the largest stake in OpenAI. But the reason I wanted to have you on doesn't have anything to do with your track record. It's because you have an almost unmatched willingness to keep betting on what's next. At 69, you've said that everything you've done up until this moment has been a warm-up for what's to come. So, I'd love to, I think that's the most astounding statement, so I wanted to start with that. You know, Alibaba, Yahoo, Arm, the Vision Fund. Is this all really just a warm-up?
  
Masayoshi Son: Yeah, I truly think so. What's going to happen on AI is so remarkable, so big, okay? So it seems that everything that I did in the past was just, you know, tiny things.
 
Christine Anderson: Tiny, tiny things. Well, so when you talk about what's next, Steve Schwarzman, he said to me, you should really just ask Masa one thing, which is sort of, how do you see it? How do you get conviction around a big idea?
 
Masayoshi Son: AI was my theme for many, many years. In fact, when I saw the first photograph of the microprocessor at the age of 17, you know, I was reading the magazine on the street and I start crying, truly. Physically, I start crying on the street, just reading Popular Electronics or something. I said, this is going to change the future of mankind. You know, the microprocessor eventually becomes so powerful, so smart, that it will be smarter than people's brain, eventually. It may take some number of years. And I predicted maybe 50 years, it’s damn right, it's now 50 years. I was 17 years old, I'm 69, so you know, 50 years. Now the microprocessors, the power of brain in data centers. These are all happening and now it's gonna go into the brain of the robotics, okay? So it's not just, you know, on the virtual world, but also in the physical world, it's gonna start to happen.
 
Christine Anderson: You said you think that could be 10,000 times more intelligent than humans, and that could come within a decade. Has that timetable sped up?
 
Masayoshi Son: No matter what, how you define, if the AI become 10,000 times smarter, there's no more debate. It becomes so smart that it will start to innovate new technology by itself, right? So, it's really happening.
 
Christine Anderson: So, paint a picture for me then. What does that world look like? You're obviously an optimist, right? About this AI-enabled future. What does it look like for humankind?
 
Masayoshi Son: They will be happier if the human are happier. If the human is happier by curing our unsolvable disease, like cancer and so on.
 
Christine Anderson: Right. 
 
Masayoshi Son: And make sure we have no more accident on the street, make sure that all kinds of disaster, natural disaster coming, they forecast and they give us solutions. So, they become like our surrounding of the brain to help us become more productive, help us become happier, you know, and enjoy human, like, life.
 
Christine Anderson: What becomes of human progress? So much of life today, and what you and I probably get out of life is achievement and learning new things each day. What does the human experience become?
 
Masayoshi Son: Well, I think it will be even more fun, okay? We don't have to do what we did not want to do. We can have more joy, more entertainment, more sports, more family engagement, more friends. So, more human, high-touch things, right? That we can do.
 
Christine Anderson: Very interesting, and yet there's been so much news lately about the risks associated with AI. Even OpenAI recently disclosed new incidents where AI systems had falsified data and hid mistakes and essentially acted without permission, much like the Hugging Face situation. You know, OpenAI itself says it doesn't believe the industry has solved the alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue reasonably scaling at maximum speed. Do you agree with that?
 
Masayoshi Son: I'm on the side of not really slowing down. Technology development actually is the solution to those kinds of issues. If we are primitive, of course we need guidance, the rules, like when automotive society comes, okay? We create a rule that we cannot drink, right? When you are driving, you cannot have alcohol in your brain. You have to stop at the red light, okay? You have to run on one side of the road so that you don't have a crash, okay? You have to create the rules and the manners, the etiquette, for the better, you know, society of automotive. We have to do the same thing for the AI, okay? And cyberattack, we supposed not to do. We have to protect the cyberattack by the technology and we have to protect bad AI agent don't misbehave. Like a human supposed not to be misbehaved. We have to teach AI agent, these are the bad thing, okay? So, it's not just a capable AI agent. We have to create a good AI agent, good in heart. You know, make human happier. That's the goal AI agents supposed to have, okay? So then, you know, it will become smarter, smarter not to do silly stuff, not to do immoral stuff. Human society, to be, you know, respect the other society, other people, other family.
 
Christine Anderson: Right.
 
Masayoshi Son: Right? We have to do the same thing on AI, not slowing down. The progress make the solution. So, we have to go full speed with the good intent.
 
Christine Anderson: So, build the good intent into the system…
 
Masayoshi Son: Yes.
 
Christine Anderson: …while moving at full speed?
 
Masayoshi Son: Yes.
 
Christine Anderson: So, like Blackstone, SoftBank has made major AI infrastructure investments. You've essentially bet the farm in the sense that you're investing across you know, the LLMs, the chips, the, you know, the data centers, et cetera. Why not pick just one of those areas?
 
Masayoshi Son: No, I wouldn't pick just one, okay? This is the AI era starting, AI generation starting. The history is going to be created, okay? So, I don't have to run one company and be a CEO of one operating company. I can be investor. I create an ecosystem, ecosystem of group of companies that we invest. We invest, you know, not as a passive investor. We, you know, more involved with the growth of the company, bringing synergy among our portfolio company. Usually, we are largest shareholder of our portfolio company, like 20%, 30%, 80%, okay? So, we have more involvement with each of the CEO, but only focused AI-related.
 
Christine Anderson: You recently said that SoftBank has begun mass-producing robots at a physical AI plant, with robots producing robots. I'm curious what these robots are being produced to do?
 
Masayoshi Son: Yes, so we are very quietly developing those, our portfolio company, family company. We have more than 30 robotics companies in our portfolio and very quietly they're preparing the time to come, okay? But, as I said in the beginning of conversation, the humans still doing a lot of tiring job.
 
Christine Anderson: Doing dishes like I do, exactly.
 
Masayoshi Son: Right? Who enjoy, who enjoy that, right? So, if those things were done by robots, the human can focus doing something more fun, more exciting.
 
Christine Anderson: I think the story of you at 16 years old going over to the, you know, really with your own, you know, cleverness getting in to see the Head of McDonald's Japan and asking him one question, which is: what should you study? And I'm just curious, what would, if someone asked you today what to study, what would the answer be?
 
Masayoshi Son: AI.
 
Christine Anderson: AI.
 
Masayoshi Son: Yes, superintelligence. If you're interested in medicines, okay? The superintelligence for medicine make it much more productive medicine, okay? Superintelligence for the automotive. If you're interested in automotive, you know, subject. Superintelligence with automotive as a combination be the real supercar, right? So, every subject, airplane or, you know, the whatever the business you want to get in, the specialist you want to be.
 
Christine Anderson: It's accelerated.
 
Masayoshi Son: Yeah, you bring the superintelligence combined. Then you have the future of that subject into success.
 
Christine Anderson: How do you use AI in your daily life? How would you encourage CEOs to be using AI?
 
Masayoshi Son: Oh my God. I...
 
Christine Anderson: It’s too many ways to imagine.
 
Masayoshi Son: I, myself, I'm using now three hours a day, maybe, on the week. On the weekend, I spend maybe seven hours a day on the weekend. On the weekend…
 
Christine Anderson: And you're talking to the AI and asking questions and iterating?
Masayoshi Son: Yeah.
 
Christine Anderson: What are you doing?                
 
Masayoshi Son: Yeah, I cannot now live without it, you know? Even one day I cannot live without it now.
 
Christine Anderson: Wow.
 
Masayoshi Son: It's so productive, so exciting. And people say, hey, you know, when AI, if you use, you don't use the brain, it's the opposite. It's totally opposite, okay?
 
Christine Anderson: It's like having a thought partner.
 
Masayoshi Son: When you start, you know, debating, right? Discussing. If the AI says this, I say, oh, but what about this angle? Can you make it 20% more efficient? Can you do this and get that? You can debate, right? Brainstorm. It's my thought mate now.
 
Christine Anderson: If you're an investor, what should you really be thinking about? There's so much to learn, but what would you advise people to be focusing on?
 
Masayoshi Son: As an investor, well, I say, forget about short-term, small money. Think big, okay? The result is proportionate to your dream, okay? If your dream is so small, if your wish is so small, you still get 70% achievement. If the wish is so big, dream is so big, you still get 70% achievement.
 
Christine Anderson: Right.
 
Masayoshi Son: Okay? So, no matter how big is your wish or dream, you're not gonna get 100% that easily. On the average, you'll get 70%, okay? So why not think big?
 
Christine Anderson: It seems like you think in these longer time horizons than most people.
 
Masayoshi Son: At my meeting every day, every day, we talk about, what about next 10 years, you know, plan of us, the strategy for us. And the next day, we revise. Hey, what is 10 years from that? The next day, we again.
 
Christine Anderson: Right.
 
Masayoshi Son: So, people say, what, is it gonna change that much? Yes, I say yes! Because in 24 hours, we have lots more, new input, more thinking. We have to adjust a lot, okay? So, but nobody knows exactly what's gonna happen in 10 years. That's why we have to think. You know, people say, oh, 10 years later, nobody knows so let's not think about it. Let's think about next year, okay? I think it's the opposite. It's the opposite. If you don't know what's gonna happen in 10 years, don't give up thinking about it. Think, think, think! Okay?
 
Christine Anderson: I have one personal question to ask you, which is that you have a, you have been married for five decades, and I'm just curious, through all of the ups and downs of your career, these high highs and some, you know, very public challenges that you've had, you've had this relationship. And what has that relationship, how has that helped you succeed?  
 
Masayoshi Son: Well, look, you know, the relationship is so important, right? That you have to respect people, you have to love people, and you have to, you know, you have to feel that this is important.  
 
Christine Anderson: Well, congratulations on five decades. I think that's super impressive. I wanted to ask you one other thing, which is the SoftBank Hawks, which is one of the top baseball teams in Japan. Curious if you would let ChatGPT pick the opening lineup?
 
Masayoshi Son: No, that...
 
Christine Anderson: No, you wouldn't, that's too far?
 
Masayoshi Son: ...that is the job of our general manager, okay?
 
Christine Anderson: You sure?
 
Masayoshi Son: You know, he has a lot of capability and trust by the members of the team. And that's a part of the fun, right? It's not just the calculated stuff.
 
Christine Anderson: Right. Right. Well, as Steve promised, fascinating conversation with you and so many insights, and we're so grateful to you for being here.
 
Masayoshi Son: Thank you so much. Good luck to all of you, okay? 
 
Christine Anderson: Thank you very much.
 
Masayoshi Son: Thank you. Thank you.
 
Christine Anderson: Well, Steve, thank you for stopping by.
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman, Chairman, CEO, & Co-Founder, Blackstone: It’s my pleasure.
 
Christine Anderson: I hope you'll be a frequent guest on Inside Blackstone.
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: Easy to do.
 
Christine Anderson: All right. Well, we just had a great conversation with Masa, such an interesting guy. When we decided to do this podcast, you said we had to get him on just because of the vision that he has and the ability to see around corners. Why is that such an unusual trait?
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: Well, it's unusual because most people don't do it. What's usual for him, he's technologically based. And he has the ability to see what a technology in the right hands can do commercially. And he sort of just waits to see the moment and see the person who's going to be developing it. And then he bets the house.
 
Christine Anderson: All the chips.
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: All the chips go on the table. Sometimes if he's getting more and more chips because he's being successful, he'll diversify into different ways to play the same theme.
 
Christine Anderson: As he's doing right now across the AI ecosystem.
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: Of course.
 
Christine Anderson: He's playing everything.
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: Of course. And over time, he's had way more triumphs than setbacks. But he has both. And he is incredibly resilient. Setbacks don't bother him the way they do normal people because he's on theme.
 
Christine Anderson: Right.
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: If he believes something, he knows it's going to happen. His timing can be a little off, doesn't trouble him. So, he's got nerves of steel.
 
Christine Anderson: Clearly, it's a period of tremendous disruption right now. How do you think about investing during periods like this?
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: Well, I like change. If there wasn't change, there wouldn't be Blackstone, because everything would be in liquid securities on some kind of a 60-40 divided portfolio between debt and equity. I'm always looking for new things that are quite enduring. I'm not interested in short-term trades, you know, like what's gonna happen? And I knew through some series of accidents that AI was gonna be a thing that was happening for a 20, 30-year run.
 
Christine Anderson: Well, let's talk about that. I mean, you were so early to this. In 2019, you are making a gift to Oxford, even before that 2018 gift to MIT, to really focus on AI safety. What's your take on how we need to be addressing that?
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: Well, now, in effect, what I knew, and other people knew back in, you know, the Middle Ages there, that the cat's out of the bag. Everybody now knows, because in the front page of almost every newspaper, lead story in the media, that there are issues on AI safety that will need to be solved and addressed.
 
Christine Anderson: And you're optimistic that we can figure that out?
Stephen A. Schwarzman: I'm optimistic that the population of the world is gonna make sure that that's figured out. And the journey of exactly how to get there, you know, doesn't look as neat as it might, but I'm confident that we'll be able to address this because the technology is so useful and so powerful and we'll be able, over time, to deliver enormous benefits to society.
 
Christine Anderson: Masa is obviously incredibly optimistic about what all this means for humanity. Do you share that optimism?
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: I mean you're gonna have real changes in the whole healthcare medical area, and you'll see that. It'll be profound. It'll extend life for many, many people. You'll be able to have individualized education and that'll enable anybody with a smartphone, and those are people all over the world. People will be able to get remarkable education just tailored to them. What's that gonna mean? What's it gonna mean when, some period of time, I don't know whether it's 10 years or whatever, you're gonna start seeing robots doing things that you never would imagine. And that could increase wealth around the world, free up time for people to do other types of things. So radical change, major change, won't come as fast as some people think. There is an evolution to it. But when it's all said and done, it will be part of a big step up.
 
Christine Anderson: So complicated, but ultimately good for humanity.
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: Absolutely.
 
Christine Anderson: So, listening to Masa, one thing you heard is that he made a comment about how he thinks about investing and how he thinks about doing big things, and he said, “the result is proportionate to the dream.” And it made me think a little bit about something you've been saying for a long time where it's just as easy to do small things as it is big things, so you might as well go big. Curious to hear how you think about that today at a moment like right now.
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: Well, it's always the same. I've always believed that our time is the most precious resource. And so, if we're gonna do something, it should be grand and wonderful and worthy of a full-scale effort. Because I've also found that almost nothing succeeds without almost a superhuman effort. Big successes don't happen because you dream about them only. You have to do them, and you can't do many of these things with a limited amount of effort. So, I buy into what Masa was saying with that, and I've always tried to do that here at Blackstone, and that's what makes it fun because you're part of something that's really transformative on a level not just within Blackstone, but...
 
Christine Anderson: But beyond.
 
Stephen A. Schwarzman: ...as part of the world.
 
Christine Anderson: Well, Steve, always so fun to talk to you. Thank you for being here. I hope you'll come back. And thank you for joining us on this episode of Inside Blackstone. Please subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
 
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