SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son voices concern over AI safety risks

Masayoshi Son has spent years as artificial intelligence’s most enthusiastic cheerleader. Now the SoftBank Group founder is voicing concern about AI safety risks as machines become more capable, according to Bloomberg. The optimist who wrote the biggest checks Few investors have tied their fortunes to AI as tightly as Son. SoftBank’s total commitments to OpenAI are projected to reach $65 billion by October 2026. Son has also refused to entertain talk of a bubble. At SoftBank’s annual general meeting on June 24, 2026, he said AI is “still in its early stages” and pushed back hard on investors who worried valuations had run too far, framing those bubble concerns as an insult to the technology itself. He went further on timelines. Son has pulled forward his target for artificial superintelligence, which he defines as AI that is 10,000 times smarter than humans, to within two years. Why safety talk moves SoftBank’s stock The market has already shown how sensitive SoftBank shares are to this exact conversation. On September 14, 2026, the stock plunged more than 13% after leaders from OpenAI and Anthropic expressed caution about safety risks in frontier model development. That was SoftBa...