Why Digitalization or Death? Masayoshi Son’s Vision for Cloud, AI, and the Future

Masayoshi Son, SoftBank founder, introduces himself and his background.

Hello everyone, I am Masayoshi Son from SoftBank. Please give me your guidance.

Digitalization or Death

Many people are forced into digitalization rather than choosing it voluntarily. Japan’s home‑appliance industry is struggling because its digital transformation is too slow. Assembling components is merely electronics; true digitalization requires integrating software and hardware, leveraging cloud technology and big data.

Although challenges exist, proactive digitalization will open the future. Passive reliance on past achievements will not last; continuous, self‑driven challenges are needed to create a better outcome.

Considering the Distant Future

About three years ago I presented SoftBank’s “30‑year vision”. At that time the company had only two employees besides me, and after a long early‑morning speech both left. I kept the vision private for decades, but now I share it again.

I was initially confused about what the world would look like 30 years from now. The farther we look, the clearer the future becomes. We spent a year gathering global expertise to imagine life, society, and technology 300 years ahead.

Transistors, like brain cells, operate in binary. Roughly 20 years ago the human brain had about 3 billion neurons, giving about 300 billion binary combinations. By 2018 the number of transistors in a single‑chip microcontroller surpassed that count.

According to Moore’s Law, computing power will keep advancing, while the number of human brain cells has remained unchanged for millennia. In 2000 years the brain cell count will still be the same, but transistor counts will far exceed it, eventually reaching 10^60 times more by 300 years from now.

Computers Will Self‑Learn

We believe imagination and creation are human privileges, but computers will soon acquire self‑learning abilities and be able to program themselves. Brain‑inspired computers will emerge, enabling robots that surpass human capabilities and coexist happily with us.

Fields once thought impossible for machines—disaster relief, caregiving, medicine, education—will be aided by such robots.

Future computers will communicate directly with our brains via wireless chips, allowing thought‑based communication.

Thirty years ago, before smartphones existed, I imagined portable smart devices. Today wearable devices like smart watches and glasses are becoming reality.

Medical advances will extend average lifespans to 200 years; what is now considered old age will be seen as youthful.

Information Explosion

In 30 years, an iPhone‑class device could have a CPU a million times more powerful than today’s, with memory capacity a million times larger and communication speeds three million times faster.

This would enable storing billions of songs and centuries of newspapers locally, while cloud connectivity would be virtually instantaneous.

Cloud as Humanity’s Greatest Asset

Everything will become a digital record stored in the cloud. Real‑time translation glasses, patented 30 years ago, will become commonplace, enabling seamless multilingual communication in education, healthcare, and work.

SoftBank is turning cloud technology into its biggest asset, combining it with big data to improve services. We collected 7.5 GB of data from mobile apps in one month to analyze network performance and user behavior—an unprecedented scale.

Mobile Devices Are Just the Beginning

SoftBank equipped all employees with iPhones and iPads, enabling cloud‑based work anywhere. Partners such as JR, pharmaceutical firms, and construction companies have also adopted iPads for field operations.

Our company has gone paperless, using video presentations and cloud‑based tools for meetings and reporting.

Challenging the world reveals new horizons; continued digitalization will drive a revolution in information and work practices.

Conclusion

This concludes my speech.