Masayoshi Son has never been accused of thinking small. At SoftBank’s annual corporate conference on July 14, the billionaire founder and CEO laid out a vision for artificial intelligence that makes most tech forecasts look like grocery lists: $5 trillion in annual AI investment by 2040, or roughly 800 trillion yen.
To put that number in perspective, it’s more than the entire GDP of Japan. Every single year. And Son thinks people worried about an AI bubble are the ones being unreasonable.
The case against calling it a bubble
Son’s argument is deceptively simple. If AI revenues eventually represent 20% of global GDP, as he projects, then $5 trillion in annual spending is actually modest relative to the returns.
At SoftBank’s annual general meeting on June 24, Son characterized skeptics of AI’s growth trajectory as “irrational.” He also set a net asset value target of 1 quadrillion yen, approximately $6 trillion, for SoftBank itself. Son stated the AI revolution could be “50 times bigger” than the dot-com boom.
