When The Dotcom Bubble Burst, 98% Of Masayoshi Son's $78 Billion Fortune Evaporated In Six Months

So, we actually originally published this article in August 2013 under the title "Meet the Man Who Lost the Most Money in Human History." That man you were meeting in the article was SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son.

In May 2022, Masa's wealth loss record was topped by a crypto tycoon named Changpeng Zhao (CZ). During the dotcom bubble, it took about a year for Masayoshi Son's net worth to drop from $78 billion to $1 billion. Over a 130-day period in 2022, CZ's net worth dropped from $97 billion to $11 billion, wiping out $86 billion in personal wealth. CZ's net worth has since climbed back up to around $50 billion.

And then came Elon. Between late 2022 and early 2023, Elon Musk's fortune dropped from $320 billion to around $138 billion. A paper loss of $182 billion.

And while Masayoshi Son no longer holds the infamous loss record, the story of what happened to his fortune in the early 2000s—and his absolute refusal to stop taking massive, gut-instinct bets—is still astounding…

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Founding SoftBank

Masayoshi Son moved with his family from Japan to California when he was just 16 years old. He barely spoke English, but eventually graduated from UC Berkeley with degrees in both economics and computer science. One of his first businesses was importing cheap knock-off versions of the arcade game "Space Invaders," then renting them to laundromats. Soon after turning 24, Masayoshi Son founded SoftBank in Tokyo. Within a year, SoftBank was developing various programs for the PC on top of publishing two popular magazines that focused on the personal computer industry.

Always striving for bigger and better, Masayoshi Son spent the next decade transforming SoftBank into a full-fledged media and telecommunications empire. By the mid-90s, SoftBank was operating a stock brokerage firm and Japan's #1 satellite television provider. He also convinced Yahoo to allow him to independently launch what would become Japan's largest search engine, Yahoo! Japan. He was so fiercely determined to build Japan's broadband infrastructure that when government bureaucrats stalled his access to utility poles, he literally showed up at the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications with a lighter and gasoline, threatening to set himself on fire if they didn't approve his plans. They capitulated.

Overnight Billionaire

After taking SoftBank public in 1995, Masayoshi Son became an overnight billionaire. Over the next five years, he used SoftBank's newly acquired war chest to expand his empire at a very rapid pace, just as the Dotcom bubble was heating up. By 1999, SoftBank was one of the largest internet technology companies in the world.

Through SoftBank, Masayoshi Son purchased large stakes in dozens of high-flying companies like E*Trade, Japan's Nippon Credit Bank, and a little startup called Alibaba. In 2000, Son met a relatively unknown former English teacher named Jack Ma. After just five minutes of hearing Ma speak, Son stopped him and offered him $20 million, later claiming he made the investment purely because of the "sparkle" in Ma's eyes. That $20 million stake eventually grew to be worth roughly $130 billion, going down in history as one of the single greatest venture investments of all time.

February 2000: Peak Net Worth

For a time, these investments looked brilliant, and SoftBank's market cap grew to an all-time high of $180 billion. Thanks largely to his 42% stake in SoftBank's equity, Masayoshi Son's net worth swelled to a whopping $78 billion in February 2000. Two months later, on March 10, 2000, the NASDAQ Composite (the stock exchange that listed nearly all bubble internet companies), peaked at 5,048, more than twice the value from one year earlier.

At this point in history, there were more than 300 publicly traded internet companies on the NASDAQ with a combined value of $1.3 trillion, which essentially did not exist three years prior.

The Bubble Bursts

• Unfortunately, by May 2000, the NASDAQ composite had dropped to 3,300.
• On September 28, 2001 (as the nation reeled from 9/11), the NASDAQ dropped to 1,500.
• Another year later, the market bottomed at 1,200. That's a 76% drop over two very painful years.

October 2002: The Lowest Point

A company like SoftBank, with so much exposure to the internet sector, did not fare well in these difficult times. While it took over two years for the broader market to hit its absolute rock bottom in October 2002, the sheer velocity of Son's initial wipeout is what makes the story so legendary. He has famously noted that the vast majority of his wealth vaporized in just the first six months of the crash, dropping by roughly $70 billion before the end of the year 2000.

As the bear market dragged on into 2001 and 2002, the bleeding continued. Every single investment Masayoshi Son had championed over the previous five years was decimated. As just one example, SoftBank's $400 million investment in E*Trade was reduced to just $22 million. By the time the dust finally settled, SoftBank's market cap had dropped a mind-numbing 98% from its $180 billion peak down to just $2.5 billion.

With that final drop in market cap, Masayoshi Son's net worth officially plummeted from an all-time high of $78 billion to an all-time low of $1.1 billion. A total personal loss of $76.9 billion. Ouch.

Ok, he was still a billionaire, and maybe we shouldn't feel too bad for him. But in the words of the great Chris Rock:

"If Bill Gates woke up tomorrow with Oprah's money, he'd jump out a fuckin' window and slit his throat on the way down, saying, "I can't even put gas in my plane!"

The Gambler Returns

With time, SoftBank slowly started to recover and rebuild, but Masa's appetite for risk never faded. He launched the $100 billion Vision Fund to place massive bets on the next generation of tech. Relying on the same gut instinct that found Alibaba, he famously poured billions into Adam Neumann's co-working company WeWork after a mere 12-minute tour. It became one of the most spectacular financial implosions in startup history, eventually immortalized in dozens of books and the Apple TV+ show "WeCrashed."

Yet, the gambler is back on top. As of 2026, thanks to the massive artificial intelligence boom and his heavy investments in AI infrastructure, Masayoshi Son's net worth is floating around $65 billion as of this writing.

Believing that "the AI revolution will be 50 times bigger than the dot-com bubble," Son is placing the largest financial bets of his entire career to ensure he controls the physical infrastructure of the AI era. Most notably, SoftBank has gone all-in on OpenAI.

After pouring $34.6 billion into OpenAI through 2024 and 2025, Son recently secured a $40 billion bridge loan from major banks to help fund another $30 billion commitment. By the end of 2026, SoftBank is expected to hold a 13% stake in OpenAI, with a cumulative investment totaling nearly $65 billion. To help fund this pivot, he even sold off SoftBank's entire $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia in late 2025.

If OpenAI eventually goes public at its desired $1 trillion valuation, SoftBank's 13% stake would be worth $130 billion.

A Life Without Gravity

Today, Masayoshi Son enjoys the spoils of a man who has repeatedly defied financial gravity. Son lives in a $100 million, three-story mansion in Tokyo that features a private, programmable golf range capable of mimicking the temperature and weather conditions of every top golf course in the world. When Bill Gates visited the house many years ago, he was reportedly speechless. In 2012, Son dropped a cool $117 million to purchase a sprawling estate in Woodside, California, near Silicon Valley. He also owns a professional Japanese baseball team, the SoftBank Hawks.

As he enters his late sixties and pivots his entire empire toward artificial intelligence, his defining philosophy remains unchanged: "The greatest risk is not taking any risk at all." Whether history ultimately remembers Masayoshi Son as a visionary prophet or the most reckless gambler of the 21st century, he has made it abundantly clear that he has no intention of making small bets.