SoftBank to raise $100-billion fund every 2-3 years, says Masayoshi Son

Son founded SoftBank in 1981 as a distributor of PC software

Two years ago, Masayoshi Son, chief executive of SoftBank, sat in a Gulfstream jet high above the Arabian Gulf, en route to meet with potential investors in a new fund that would invest in tech start-ups. He was going through his presentation with Rajeev Misra, a key lieutenant, when something stopped him.

One of the slides included the proposed size of the fund: $30 billion. The figure would make the Vision Fund, as Son had named it, about four times the size of the largest venture capital (VC) fund ever created and bigger than any private equity fund in history.