 Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. I'm Larry Fink, and I'm speaking to all of you from New York. My guest today is Masiyosa-san, who's speaking to all of you from Tokyo. And both of us are thrilled we're not in Davos today that we're home. But what is amazing today, we are speaking like we are in Davos. We're having this session like we are in Davos. So part of our conversation today is about talking about technology and how technology is changing our lives, changing our lives for the better. And this is a great example of how that technology is changing our life for the better. So let me begin and say, Masa, my friend, my partner, my, we're both like twins. We're both chairman, founders, and CEOs. So it's, it's, I'm sorry I'm not with you. I regret we don't have wine together. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Larry, you're amazing. You're great. So Masa, why don't we get started? Because we only have 30 minutes today. Can we, can we get your, your perspective of 2020? The pandemic is still with us in many ways. We're learning about new strains of the virus. So certainly there's more uncertainty than ever before. Tell, tell the audience, how are you feeling today? Are you optimistic? What do you think is going to happen in 2021? Yeah, well, I'm optimistic in the long run. The vaccines and the antibodies for medical antibodies, they're all coming to distributing to many of the people. So in the long run, I'm optimistic once it's over, it's over. And people will say, wow, the sky's blue again. But in the short run, I'm very pessimistic. Still many lives are in danger and people are dying every day around the world. And many countries started vaccination, but even country like Japan, we haven't even got anybody vaccinated yet. So it's going to take some time for majority of the people get vaccinated. I'm very worried still in the short run. But the pandemic has shown that parts of our lives and certainly technology, it's accelerated. We've seen a profound change in global economies, how we work, how we live, how we are educated, how we are applying medicine. Can you describe to the audience, where do you observe the biggest transformations and from your perspective, the role of technology? Yeah, well, transformation is, I think, practically getting accelerated. As you say, I am investing into many companies which is utilizing AI to disrupt all kinds of industries. And I'm very excited to see all these entrepreneurs bringing this new technology tools and the platform to change people's lifestyle and education, medicine, the way we work and so on. Exactly as you said, but this is drastically being accelerated because we cannot touch and feel as we were doing in the past. We have to use our brain more, but actually it's in tragedy, it's a disastrous situation, but technology-wise, it's evolving quicker. What technologies are evolving quicker and where do you see technology changing us tomorrow and all throughout the coming years? Yes. Look, as we are doing just a video conference right now, this video conferencing became necessary too. I'm doing the Zoom kind of video conferencing five, six, ten times a day and meeting with people and the companies from all over the world. I don't have to travel to overseas. So it's actually efficiency has gotten even more efficient and we can share the desktop, we can see the face-to-face as if we are actually in the same room. So the way we work is drastically changed. I'm seeing many ad tech companies using AI, the children and teachers are meeting over the internet through the video and AI is checking the performance of every student and the teachers. So efficiency again is drastically there. Drug discovery is drastically accelerated using power of AI, the new drug discovery getting much more advanced and even the COVID medicines, AI is utilized everywhere and so acceleration is big time coming there and autonomous driving is coming into much more acceleration and even for the autonomous driving, the AI based simulations is actually functioning very strong. The fintech is also big. I checked there are 510 unicorns right now over one billion around the world. Half of that is from US, half of half is from China and the remaining is all the way. The variation wise, it's 510 billion dollars and half of that again from US but two-third of the remaining half is from China. And I'm sad to say only one company from Japan. So the AI is utilized only in actually half, half of 500 company using AI as a tool to disrupt every industry. So of course still the US is by far the biggest in the force but China is also growing very quickly in every segment of the industry and many are really disrupting the traditional industry. It's a very exciting movement. But I would say some of this is not just a disruption. I would say some of this is our miracles. When you think about the miracles of, as you suggested, 12 Zoom calls a day. Imagine if we had this pandemic six years ago. We did not have the technology to do this. Think about how we are able to do our work and how we're able to live our lives in this remote world today as we are trying to stay healthy. I look at this as a miracle and are there any other miracles that we're not aware of, Masa, that you see that's going to really shape our world? I mean you talk about AI but I love this fact that we spend a lot of time talking about disruption that technology is doing. And I look at it from the lens of miracles and advancements and improvement of society and advancements and improvement of how we live. And these are all really important things. And I do believe most of society in this pandemic have been able to cope and live and work. Obviously there is a lot of inequalities and a lot of issues. But let's be clear. We did not have this technology. This innovation, this entrepreneurship. We would be in far worse shape globally today. I give you one example. You as an investor, you look at so many great companies. Ten years ago, the GAFA was not in the top 10 of the list of the market cap in the world. So today, eight of them are in the top 10. The eight of the internet companies, they are in the top 10. So what did the internet disrupt? How do they get their position today? Internet totally changed the media and advertisement. It's an advertisement business. Advertisement business is 1% of GDP. One more big industry that the internet disrupt is the retail industry. That is like 10%, 12% depending on the countries. So 1% and 10%. That's the two industry that internet has disrupted. 15% of the GDP is actually logistics in China. 11% of the GDP is logistics in the U.S. 11% in the U.S. 15% in China is logistics. So people still doubt the power of fully autonomous vehicle but mass production of autonomous vehicle is happening in two years. Two years? Two years. Mass production, it's no longer just a test. Licensed mass production of the vehicle with no driving wheel. No driving wheel. That is starting in two years. And of course, in the first year, it's not millions of units but mass production starting happening in two years. And several years after that, the cost per mileage by fully autonomous driving become cheaper than the car the consumer owns. So how many people need car in their home that you drive by yourself? Instead of calling taxi and so on, you can call autonomous car from your smartphone. Just one tap and then autonomous car come and pick you up and bring you there. Cheaper than your own car. You don't have to have the car insurance. You don't have to have a garage. You don't have to go look for parking lot when you go shopping or in an office or any place. So it's much easier. And for the logistics, it's actually people spending $5 for shipping goods delivered to your home. That $5 in the developed countries, that become $0.50. So several years after the mass production start, which is this decade, the logistics cost become $0.10. Then the whole industry change. So it's so much cheaper to get product shipped to your home or office. Much quicker, much cheaper, much more availability and no hassle. So why did people pay so much rent in the dense metropolitan? Because it was more convenient to go there. But why do you need a very expensive real estate to bring the traffic of pedestrian who actually get out of the traffic jam? Instead, you can get all those things much, much cheaper. So logistics industry, the transportation industry, drastically have a change. So automobile today, it has 100 years of history. That was the biggest industry in the mankind. But before automobile, there were 3,000 years of history using horse as a power of transportation. 3,000 years. So 3,000 years of horse power based transportation became 100 years of driving the automobile with a gas. Now that is going to change to driverless vehicle. I call this miracle. I call this miracle. The AI is driving for you. It's a vehicle with a supercomputer. So it's like a smartphone. It's like a supercomputer of 10 years, 20 years ago. So it has that kind of power. The automobile become a real supercomputer with four wheels. Inside the supercomputer vehicle, you can continue to enjoy your work or entertainment without worrying about traffic jam or accident. There will be no more accident. It will be much safer than human driving. And because it's so smart and communicate each other, traffic jam is going to go away. Like here today, only in 100 years, the horse is not allowed in highway. Horse is not allowed in most of the city road. Horse is allowed in just a hobby, horse ride park. Now human driver's car would be prohibited to be driving in the highway or, you know, metropolitan in my view in next 50 years because human caused the accident. So I think a drastic change is going to happen to the way we live, the way we commute, the way we, you know, interact. The semiconductor companies, I talked to the key, you know, CEOs and the technologists. They're all saying next biggest, you know, their pioneering thing is not the smartphone anymore. It's too simple. It's autonomous car. That's the supercomputer. So that's where the semiconductor technology goes. I think that would be the biggest industry. It's going to be a truly miracle. And of course, using AI, the gene editing, genome editing to cure your future disease before you even notice. So the future disease you can predict and do the editing of your, you know, miscopy genome in your string. And for today's body, proteome, you know, study is not again giving the solutions. None of these were available five years, 10 years ago. Right. And in the next 10 years, it's very, very popular. It's become new common sense. How do we get to that other side though? I mean, the miracles that you're talking about is also, as you said, very disruptive. And how do we create a more just future then? Because we have millions of jobs of transportation people who are driving cars and trucks and other forms of vehicles. We have all these different transformations that will ultimately become the miracles as you suggested. But what do you suggest for governments and countries to do in terms of moving forward in terms of making sure that we move fast and forward? Because these are miracles at the same time. We need to do this in a way that we're not creating a societies that are more unequal. And that to me is one of the big missing ingredients when we talk about technology because the speed in which technology is changing. We're seeing evidence that humans in many parts of humanity can adapt as fast. How do we navigate that, Masa? I think people have to adapt. The technology evolution cannot be stopped or slowed down. It's happening anyway. The discovery is happening over the new technology everywhere, every day. So we cannot stop it. We have to adapt. We have to educate ourselves. We have to learn. We have to adapt. So there was a time, as I said, where the host was the main power of transportation. And there were lots of jobs, millions of people's jobs, taking care of horses and so on. Those jobs go on. But people always find a new job. So the unhuman-like job where you have lots of danger, dirty and tiring job will be replaced by silver color. So there is a white color and blue color and there is a new color, I call it silver color. It's a robot with AI that's going to come to replace many of the blue color jobs. But many of the blue color jobs, are we doing this blue color, you know, dangerous or dirty job because it's a joyful thing? No, it's because you have to earn the wage. That was the main reason. But if you have the silver color taking care of those dangerous or dirty jobs, then human can choose to do a more human-like job. Like communicating with the other human, listening and discussing handmade parts or painting or having a class of entertainment. All those human to human become a more exciting job for humans and become a more valuable job. Maybe one day we'll have technology and AI to replace CEOs, Mosta, and we can take those classes together. You know, earlier this week I wrote about climate change, Mosta, and you're a better expert than I am by law related to technology. For us to get to a zero carbon future, it is estimated we have to spend $50 trillion on new technologies. You're talking about some of that related to driverless cars, electric cars, but do you see technology and are you investing in technologies that create an acceleration towards a net zero carbon world? Yeah, you know, I've been investing and creating a lot of solar park, you know, gigawatts solar power plants. And in the countries where lots of sunshine, it actually became the cheapest way of creating electricity. Usually people calculate and do the 25 years finance, but actually the panel keep on producing generating electricity for 80 years. So after you recoup and make money in 25 years, you know, project finance, the remaining, you know, 50 years, 60 years become free of cost, because you have already recouped. There's no cost of material. It's just a sunshine and silicone stays, you know, very good and the glass covering that is actually staying, you know, 100 years. So as long as you keep on cleaning it, sunshine is available. So in the long run, I think electricity costs become very inexpensive and renewable and clean. So the power of wind and the sunshine, they are renewable energy that's good to live together on the earth. And of course, additional new technology being developed, but those two basic renewable is becoming very, very low cost. And only thing you need is the grid and the big inter-country grid. If they are connected each other, then somewhere there is always sunshine. Somewhere there is always a wind blowing. So all you need is the gigantic giga power, you know, power cable connecting each other as a grid. Do you see the cables having transformation technology to reduce the latent, you know, to right now the transmission of electricity degrades over over distance. And so is there technology that you're aware of that is being developed to improve the latency? Hyper power grid actually reduce only 2.5% across thousands of kilometers, thousands of kilometers, miles, thousands of miles, only 2.5% reduction in transmission. So it's only if you transmit from AC to DC, DC to AC back again, then you have the loss of efficiency that you generate in DC and transmit in DC and then use it in DC. So for example, the power generation by solar is DC, right? And then DC hyper power transmission line and then DC consumption by let's say cloud data center, you don't need AC. So DC to DC to DC actually only reduce decrease 2.5%, not 50%. So that's happening. Good. I want to change the topic so we'll have a few minutes more. You spoke about 75% of all the unicorns are in the United States and China, and you said only one in Japan. Softbank is investing in South America now in Korea and in Southeast Asia. Where do you see the next hubs of innovation coming? Is it going to remain in the two major countries or are you starting to see more and more innovation elsewhere? Is the world becoming awakened to this? We haven't talked about India or even parts of Europe. Is the world awakening to this phenomenon or do you see the dominance of the United States and China persisting in the future? The U.S. and China still dominant because 80% of the patents of AI is still coming from those two countries. So as I said, 50% U.S. Variation-wise, 2.3% of the remaining is from China. The number of company-wise, 25% is China, half of half is China, and the total half is U.S. But the 80% patent is from those two countries, depending on how you count, could be 90%. If you count more important AI patents. Could it be the same in the future? I think so. For the next 20 years, it's even more getting concentrated. So Japan is one, India is eight. So India has more AI-based unicorns than Japan. That's sad. I'm so sad for Japanese society. The Japanese government have to rethink. Japan is still number three in GDP in the world. And this is not acceptable for the future of Japan. But anyway, U.S. still is the center of the innovation. AI-based patent, U.S. and China is now half and half. So the future technology is actually more getting accelerated in China. So we should continue to look for the new innovations in the same places. We don't have to look elsewhere. Those two countries are the center of innovation. Lasa, we have only two minutes left. Is there anything else that you wanted to tell the audience? Yeah, I say some people say they're worried about AI. Is AI good for humanity or not? I said definitely good for humanity. AI is helping people's life. AI is helping the no more traffic accident. AI is helping people get connected each other. AI is helping many other ways from saving from disaster. Even the world climate change, the AI is helping. So I think as long as we use the power of AI for the good for the humanity, which I believe majority of people are using for that purpose, this is a good thing for humanity. We're out of time. Once again, I learned about two or three things from Masa. Hopefully all of you have learned something. Masa-san has proven over his time from Berkeley to creating SoftBank, changing the world for the better. I think sometimes people thought Masa was a little out of there. And he has, time and time again, has proven to be a man of great understanding of where the world is going. So I'm proud to say that you are a friend and a mentor. So everyone, please still stay safe and healthy and get that vaccination when you can. And hopefully Japan will have vaccinations. And Masa, when it's your turn that you'll have your vaccination. Thank you very much. With your health and happiness for all of you. Thank you. Bye everyone. Thank you. Bye everyone. Thank you.