Inside the Eccentric, Relentless Deal-Making of Masayoshi Son www.bloomberg.com

Masayoshi Son has been an unstoppable force in the technology world over the last year. As he lined up a roster of big backers—Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and Apple’s Tim Cook among them—for SoftBank’s planned $100 billion Vision Fund, Son took stakes in scores of businesses engaged in a dizzying array of activities: ride-hailing, chip-making, office-sharing, satellite-building, robot-making, even indoor kale-farming.

Son’s idiosyncratic deal-making has confounded admirers and detractors for years. And the latest frenzy has been no exception. In deal after deal, according to people involved, Son pressed to meet founders face to face, encouraged them to take more money than they wanted and wielded his outsized checkbook as a weapon. Along the way, he rattled rivals with his growing influence and changed the game of startup investing -- for better or worse.