Former SoftBank CFO Alok Sama On AI Hype, Google-Breakup And "The Money Trap"

As one of the strategic minds behind SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund, Alok Sama has had a front‑row seat to the most audacious bets in tech investing.

With a background spanning Wall Street, global M&A, and technology leadership, he brings a rare perspective on how capital, conviction, and culture collide to shape the future of innovation.

A globally respected voice among AI speakers and finance thought leaders, Alok has advised some of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs and business leaders.

His insights cut through the noise—whether on the hype around artificial intelligence, the scalability of startups, or the mindset required to navigate uncertainty in high‑stakes markets.

In this exclusive interview with The Champions Speakers Agency, Alok reflects on his experience with the Vision Fund, the real-world impact of generative AI, and what today’s investors should really be watching.

Q1. Your debut book, The Money Trap, dives into your time at SoftBank. What did you want readers—especially investors—to take away from it?

Alok Sama: "Generally, yeah, the book is my first, obviously, hopefully not my last. The book is a memoir, and it’s born out of a desire to share my experiences, both professional and personal, with a broad audience. It’s not just a story of my life – I think those types of memoirs get a tad boring.

"Instead, the book focuses on a slice of life, a five-year period when I worked alongside one of the most consequential technology investors of all time, Masayoshi Son, founder of SoftBank, which at one point had the largest technology fund in the world – the Vision Fund, a hundred-billion-dollar fund.

"The book has been described by the Wall Street Journal as “raffishly funny.” It’s intended to be entertaining. The Economist had a very interesting take on the book – they described it as a Rorschach test for readers, and I like that because it’s a book that is not binary, as many memoirs or non-fiction books tend to be.

"What you take away from the book tells you a lot about yourself. So The Economist, for example, makes the point that depending on your mindset, you might see it as a book that glorifies the culture of deal-making, or alternatively, you could see it as an exposé of the vacuousness of the mindless pursuit of money. And there’s plenty in the book to support both views.

"So that’s really a summary of the book, and I’ve been overwhelmed by the reception. It’s just really been fantastic to engage with people all over the world on some of the issues that come up."

Q2. From an investor’s lens, is AI overhyped—or is it the foundation of the next wave of value creation?

Alok Sama: "Yeah, I think the answer to that question is in the second half of the question, which is, I do think that AI will be a game-changer – indeed, it already is a game-changer. And that probably is the future of the tech industry, to the degree one can predict the tech industry at all.

"If you look at AI, the action right now is at the enterprise level. And by the way, the AI phenomenon is not just a game-changer for the technology industry – it’s a game-changer for businesses generally. And how well a business integrates AI into its entire value chain will become a key determinant of profitability and competitive advantage.

"The simplest way to think about AI at the enterprise level is as a productivity tool. The more robotic functions – call centre workers, coding, parallel research, and analytics of all kinds – are the most easily disrupted. But over time, you will see new businesses evolve.

"The jury is still out in terms of how AI works at the individual level. So far, it’s been for amusement – the kind of people coming up with AI-generated photographs of themselves. I’ve played with those sorts of things. But we haven’t seen the same types of business models that we did with Web 2.0 – Uber, for example. But over time, that will happen, and it will be very exciting.

"So, the excitement right now is to come back to your central question in terms of technology investing – arguably, the overhype is in and around AI. It’s around not just the large language models like OpenAI but also applications, and it will increasingly become clear what those applications are."

Q3. How do you evaluate tech giants from an innovation standpoint—is scale stifling or enabling progress?

Alok Sama: "Yeah, I think the issue of size comes up in the context of the US Magnificent Seven—certainly Google, Microsoft and others. And I, for one, I’m not convinced that size is the enemy of innovation.

"If you go back and look at the history of technology innovation, back in the 60s and 70s, the centre of innovation was less Silicon Valley—it was Bell Labs, right? Bell Labs was a part of AT&T, which is the ultimate monopolist in terms of monopoly on the telecommunications business in the United States.

"And even at Google, for example, the innovation at Google unrelated to its core business—DeepMind is a great example. You saw the Nobel Prize go to a couple of people from Google as a result of the work they’ve done on protein folding.

"You know, that’s been quite amazing—transformative. I mean, again, out of Google, autonomous cars, that technology—again, nothing to do with Google’s core business—but that’s something they invested in, suffered huge losses over a period of time, and now it’s very real. I mean, I rode in my first Waymo a few weeks ago, and there’s no looking back. You just know that’s what the future is.

"And some of these companies—founder-controlled companies—they’ve been just so enormously successful, cash-generative. They have the ability to invest in unrelated businesses that can be quite profound in terms of the impact they make on technology, on humanity generally speaking.

"Having said that, there is scope for abuse. I mean, Amazon, for example, in terms of the power that it has and how it exercises it in the context of its marketplace—those are things that the regulators need to watch out for.

"And I, for one, I’m a big fan of behavioural remedies as opposed to structural remedies. In other words, it dictates how people behave in the conduct of their business as opposed to outright breakups. I’m just not convinced that would accomplish anything in the case of Google, for example, which is a case that’s going to be litigated over the next several years."

Q4. What metrics or attributes matter most when assessing a startup or scaling a tech firm for investment?

Alok Sama: "So, technology investing at some level is a numbers game. You know, you have to take a portfolio approach. So if you make 10 investments, for example, you know that a couple are going to be outright dogs—I mean, complete write-offs. Some are going to be middling performers, and you invest in the hope that at least one is going to be a home run.

"And if you take that approach, then you have to start off—when you look at an investment—you have to start off looking at the addressable market and whether this business can be huge and make up for the dogs that you’re inevitably going to have in your portfolio so, you know, not just a 10-bagger but potentially a 100-bagger.

"And so, for that, you look for businesses that have the potential to become huge businesses—to become unicorns, decacorns and beyond. So that’s one. And then, you look for product-market fit. It’s one thing for the market to be large, but you’ve equally got to have a product that fits with the needs of that marketplace. So, product-market fit is crucial.

"And then third—but by no means least—is the entrepreneur. You need to look for entrepreneurial resilience. Has this individual—he or she—dealt with failure? It’s a bit cliché, but it’s a stepping stone to success almost. So you look for resilience, you look for flexibility—whether this individual will listen to investors, will listen, whether the founder will be flexible.

"Lots of twists and turns—inevitable along the way—will they be flexible and listen to the board and take guidance? So those are some of the characteristics that you look for in a founder. And so, you know, those three factors: large addressable markets, product-market fit, and then, very importantly, very crucially, the founder. Those are the things I would look for."

This exclusive interview with Alok Sama was conducted by Mark Matthews of The Motivational Speakers Agency.