In recent years, SoftBank has been something of a totem for venture capital largesse. The Japanese investment juggernaut headed by Masayoshi Son has been, by some margin, VC's most prolific investor, backing iconic startup success stories—and some of the biggest failures.
Now, things are turning sour indeed. On Thursday, we learned that SoftBank's Vision Fund posted a record investment loss of 3.5 trillion yen (about $27 billion) for its latest fiscal year. The overall loss for the company totaled 2.1 trillion yen. Its stock price, meanwhile, has plummeted, losing around half of its value since March.
