Tomohiro Ohsumi/Getty Images
- Masayoshi Son has spent recent years unwinding his multi-billion dollar stake in Alibaba.
- The SoftBank CEO is betting everything on the success of AI.
- Chip designer Arm's success will embolden him, but problems remain with the Vision Funds.
Masayoshi Son owes much of his success to an incredibly prescient dot-com era bet on Alibaba.
The SoftBank chief first invested $20 million in Jack Ma's ecommerce upstart in 2000, when it was just a year old. Son continued to back Ma as Alibaba blossomed into China's answer to Amazon.