startup that builds brains for robots izhikevich pitched son on investing tens of millions so his company could develop robots that would find widespread use in a decade or two he interrupted me in the middle of my presentation and said i got it izhikevich says how much do you need to achieve your vision the russian realized son wanted to give him more money than he was requestingon the condition that izhikevich accelerate his work son didnt want to wait 10 or 20 years he wanted a full range of robots in three to five years robots everywhere thats the vision we share izhikevich says what drives me crazy is how slow things are in masa i found my match in july softbank announced a 114 million investment in izhikevichs brain corp the russian appreciates the money but admits he now feels the pressure of living up to sons expectations son is largely handsoff after cutting a check though he stays in touch with founders by phone and email he sits on the boards of a handful of companies including sprint alibaba and arm holdings the chipmaker he acquired in 2016 for 32 billion in the biggest deal of his career he did get deeply involved in the operations of sprint as that company struggled while some question the wisdom of giving entrepreneurs more cash than theyre looking for theres another way to look at sons 2017 blitzkrieg hes gotten softbank big stakes in more than a dozen of the most prominent startups in the world including the two most valuable uber and didi in the process hes shown he can help entrepreneurs chase ambitious expensive dreams with a single check for all of the founders i work with he is now the first name on their list says mark tluszcz who cofounded the venture firm mangrove capital partnersdoubters from the getgo son has faced skeptics his entire life he grew up on the southern japanese island of kyushu bullied as a child because of his korean ancestry his father more than made up for the abuse doting on his son and praising him as a genius for his business acumen son left japan at 16 to study in the us and launched his career as an entrepreneur while at the university of california at berkeley he brought space invaders game machines from japan to the us and invented an electronic translator that he sold for about 1 million son likes to talk about how he proved doubters wrong after returning to japan to build his empire he made early investments in yahoo and yahoo japan as well as alibaba he took over vodafones japanese wireless operation when everyone thought the business was hopeless and by persuading steve jobs to give him exclusive rights to the first iphone in japan turned it into a fierce competitor he stumbled plenty too during the dotcom boom son was one of the most enthusiastic investorsbacking more than 800 startups to create what