“Sunshine is the gift of the gods,” Masayoshi Son cheerily told a crowd of investors on the morning of October 3, 2018. He was in greater Noida, India, giving a speech about solar power. The day was hot, in the mid-90s, and for Son, CEO of the Japanese telecom conglomerate SoftBank, particularly bright. His visions for SoftBank—to be at the vanguard of technology and AI investing—had captivated the global capital world. “As long as you have the land and sunshine . . . I will give you free electricity,” he said. Son had committed to investing as much as $100 billion in Indian solar infrastructure. The free power would come 25 years from now.
Meanwhile, nine and a half time zones away, Adam Neumann, cofounder and CEO of WeWork, the fast-growing global office-leasing player, was in New York celebrating a series of recent milestones: becoming New York’s largest private landlord; committing the company to becoming carbon neutral by 2023; and officially launching WeGrow, an early-education offshoot run by his wife, Rebekah.
Neumann and Son, who had become partners nearly two years earlier, when Son first invested in WeWork, were ebullient for other reasons. They believed that they were on the verge of closing a $20 billion deal to buy out WeWork’s other investors and fund sweeping plans for new expansion. The arrangement would allow WeWork to forestall having to go public for years, letting it grow without scrutiny from Wall Street analysts, mutual fund managers, or other investors. Plus, the unusual venture, Neumann hoped, would value WeWork at $47 billion, more than double what it had been a year earlier. This would boost the fortunes of both men. Son could point to the deal as evidence of his investment strategy’s success; Neumann would join the rarefied club of American entrepreneurs, including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Uber’s Travis Kalanick, whose companies’ private valuations soared this high.
Meanwhile, there was a third man in the mix, Mohammad bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Bin Salman was Son’s biggest investor. Two years earlier, he’d put in nearly half the capital, $45 billion, to launch Son’s $100 billion Vision Fund, a brash and controversial investment vehicle fueling the world’s biggest startups, including WeWork, Uber, DoorDash, and ByteDance. In October, the prince would say publicly that he intended to put up another $45 billion. He was also expecting Son in Riyadh later in the month, at a Saudi financial conference known as Davos in the Desert. Neumann was invited, too, even though, as an Israeli citizen, he wasn’t officially allowed in the Islamic country.
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