• Kurkova and Drury filed a complaint against the Fisher Island Club last Thursday.
• The lawsuit says the club's board of directors threatened the couple and unjustly expelled them.
• The Fisher Island Club said the complaint is nothing more than disgruntled former members.

The supermodel Karolina Kurkova and her husband, the real estate broker Archie Drury, are suing the exclusive members-only club on Fisher Island, a private island near Miami that's home to some of the biggest — and richest — players in business and tech.

In their complaint, filed last Thursday in Miami-Dade County court, Kurkova and Drury say the club's board of directors threatened and targeted them to strip the couple of their property interests on the island and prevent Drury from conducting business there. "Doing so allowed the Club Board to continue to engage in their illegal usurpation of control" of the island in hopes that "their wrongful conduct would not be exposed," the lawsuit says. It accuses the club of wrongfully suspending Drury's membership twice and says it ultimately expelled the couple from the club in January. Kurkova and Drury say the club board's actions harmed their reputation and caused them millions of dollars in damages.

"Florida's private clubs and HOAs operate without proper oversight, leaving property owners vulnerable to unfair governance and unchecked power," Melanie Bonvicino, a spokesperson for Kurkova, told BI in a statement. "We believe that the time for lawmakers to act is now by implementing meaningful reforms to address these issues."

Kurkova and Drury, who have three children, bought their first Fisher Island Club membership in 2013 for $250,000. In 2018, they purchased a second membership that was designated for an employee of theirs, according to the lawsuit. Kurkova, best known for her work as a Victoria's Secret Angel, owns six residential units on the island, and Drury was a real estate agent for Douglas Elliman on the island from 2017 through December 2022.

The lawsuit says issues between Kurkova and Drury and the club board started shortly after Drury left Douglas Elliman to start his own brokerage company.

Two of the Fisher Island Club board members, David Chene and Mark Zeitchick, also sit on the board of directors of Douglas Elliman, which Kurkova and Drury's lawsuit says posed "significant conflicts of interest."

The Fisher Island Club said it "denies all of the allegations in the lawsuit as baseless and is firm in the belief that the complaint is nothing more than disgruntled former members. The Fisher Island Club looks forward to defending each of its challenged actions in detail in court filings as appropriate."

A Range Rover and food delivery gone wrong

Fisher Island is a 216-acre artificial island just south of Miami Beach that's accessible only by boat or helicopter. Residents have included Oprah Winfrey, the tennis player Caroline Wozniacki and her husband — the former NBA player David Lee — as well as Sintavia CEO Brian Neff and Mark Sutcliffe, who founded the software company Redzone. The Fisher Island Club is integral to residents' social life; nearly everyone who resides on the small island is a member. The club facilities include restaurants, private beaches with sand imported from the Bahamas, a beach club and spa, a golf course, and two marinas.

The Fisher Island Club suspended Drury's membership for six months in December 2023 after informing him via email that he had been accused of various forms of inappropriate conduct since 2021 including stealing a white Range Rover owned by another member, threatening and giving the middle finger to another club member, and acting inappropriately to a marina employee. In an email included in a December complaint Drury filed and later withdrew, the club's secretary said Drury came into the marina office in October 2023 "screaming and visibly upset" about where marina staff members were docking a vessel owned by the retired NFL star Tom Brady. The email also said Drury's alleged misconduct included the "general intimidation of Club management and Club members."

In their lawsuit, Drury and Kurkova say the allegations were part of an "orchestrated effort" by the club board and its officers to "target, damage, punish, and ultimately expel" Drury and Kurkova in violation of the club's governing documents and Florida law. They said the misconduct allegations were "patently false or grossly overstated."

They said that the Range Rover incident, for example, was an "innocent mistake" and that Drury only drove the vehicle from a parking garage to an external parking lot before realizing he was in the wrong white Range Rover. The car's owner did not press charges, the lawsuit says.

Two weeks later, on December 24, 2023, on Christmas Eve, Drury was at home on Fisher Island with his hungry 2-year-old daughter, according to the lawsuit. Per his suspension, Drury was not permitted at the time to use the club facilities, including the restaurants. Drury tried to place a delivery order to one of the club's restaurants, but the wait was over an hour, the lawsuit said, so Drury walked to the restaurant, stepped one foot inside, retrieved the food for his daughter, and went home. The club issued Drury a second six-month suspension for what they called "a flagrant violation" of his initial suspension.

In November 2024, the couple received another letter from the board stating that the duo attempted to defraud the club and circumvent its rules by attempting to designate a membership to a tenant, the lawsuit says. Kurkova and Drury said in the complaint that this was permitted under the club's bylaws for residents who own two or more residential units on the island. After an investigation into the matter, the club expelled Kurkova, Drury and their family in January.

The Douglas Elliman connection

The lawsuit accuses Chene and Zeitchick of using their club board positions to benefit Douglas Elliman rather than working in the best interests of the club and its members.

Chene, the chairman of Douglas Elliman's board, is also the cofounder and co-managing partner of the investment firm Kennedy Lewis, which tried to buy "the last remaining significant piece of real estate" on Fisher Island, a 10-acre fuel depot owned by the energy-storage firm TransMontaigne Partners, according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit says the board threatened to suspend club members who found out about the negotiations and raised concerns about the potential deal. Ultimately, the developer Related Group landed the deal, but the suit goes on to accuse Chene and Zeitchick of using their board positions to push for Douglas Elliman to exclusively broker the new development in exchange for club benefits.

The Fisher Island club said that "allegations by plaintiffs that certain Club Board members used their influence for personal or corporate gain are patently false, unjustified and are nothing short of scandalmongering."

Kurkova and Drury are seeking a trial by jury against the Fisher Island Club. The lawsuit says Drury had been "a respected and active member of the Fisher Island community," having served on the Fisher Island Community Association board from 2021 to 2023, a position to which he was elected. The lawsuit says Drury also spent six years helping to establish a medical clinic on the island operated by the University of Miami.

In their complaint, the couple accuses the board of abuses of power including violating the club's bylaws, allowing two board members to remain past their term limits, and threatening other members with retaliatory suspensions if they voiced concerns about the board's actions.

In addition to Chene and Zeitchick, the club's board members are Robert Nydick; Andrew Zaro, whose family runs the New York bakery chain Zaro's; and Rafael Llopiz, the CEO of Quik Park, a parking facility operator in New York City.

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A little-known Texas crisis consultant, Jed Wallace, on Tuesday sued Blake Lively for defamation, saying that she had caused him "millions of dollars" in reputational and emotional harm.

For nearly eight weeks, Lively and Justin Baldoni, who directed and starred alongside her in the movie "It Ends With Us," have been at war. In a lawsuit filed in late December, Lively accused Baldoni and his team of running a coordinated smear campaign against her and tapping Wallace to assist by weaponizing "a digital army." (Baldoni, his publicists and Wallace have denied these allegations.) In January, Baldoni sued Lively for defamation and extortion, which Lively's legal team told BI was a "desperate" strategy.

Wallace owns a PR firm called Street Relations and has cultivated a certain mystique among his peers. On his LinkedIn page, which is no longer available, the crisis guru described himself as "a hired gun" with a "proprietary formula for defining artists and trends." One entertainment industry executive familiar with Wallace's services told Business Insider that Wallace "is the guy you hire if your kid is stuck in Bolivia or something."

Wallace, 54, has represented the YouTuber Adin Ross, Paramount Pictures, and Hamilton Souther, a self-described shaman and ayahuasca-ceremony guide who offers life coaching services for CEOs and celebrities. In a 2021 lawsuit filed by Bam Margera, the star of MTV's "Jackass," against Paramount Pictures, Margera said that Wallace, who had no medical training or credentials, oversaw an "inhumane" substance-abuse treatment program that included requiring Margera to take medication during daily FaceTime calls with Wallace. Wallace denied those allegations, and the suit was settled in 2022.

In December, The New York Times published an explosive story detailing Lively's claims that Baldoni's team deployed a "social manipulation" plan to "destroy" her reputation. The story cited a civil rights complaint filed by Lively and "thousands of pages of text messages and emails." In turn, Baldoni, his publicists, and Wallace filed a libel lawsuit against the Times denying the allegations and accusing the paper of "cherry-picking" and altering private messages to deliberately mislead readers. Chip Babcock, a partner in the Texas law firm Jackson Walker, who represents Wallace, told BI that "Mr. Wallace has never participated in a smear campaign against Blake Lively and to suggest otherwise would be false and defamatory." The Times has said they plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.

In his lawsuit against Lively, Wallace said the actor sowed confusion in the press by naming him as a defendant in her civil rights complaint but not in her lawsuit, which she filed 10 days later.

His filing comes after Lively filed a petition in Texas state court on January 21 requesting Wallace be deposed about the nature of his work with Baldoni. (That petition was withdrawn the same day Wallace filed his suit.)

Bryan Freedman — a Hollywood attorney representing Baldoni's team and Wallace in their lawsuit against the Times — called Wallace a do-gooder.

"Jed Wallace helps with real-life human crisis, trauma, mental health concerns, addiction issues and personal safety issues," Freedman wrote in an email to BI.

"Seemingly insurmountable situations" are Wallace's specialty, Freedman added. "When good humans are fighting to save themselves, their families, or people they love," he wrote, "that is when people engage Jed to assess, monitor and help them strategize."

Wallace's firm has no website. His name appears in archives of the student newspaper at Fordham University, where he played football in the late 1980s and early 1990s and still holds the record for fifth-longest punt.

Wallace moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s, attending acting classes at the Beverly Hills Playhouse and working at a restaurant on Montana Avenue, a person who knew him at the time said. Eventually, he landed in public relations. Between 2004 and 2006, multiple press releases indicate he worked for MPH PR, owned by Mike Hiles, whose clients included the advertising agency RMD Entertainment Group and VirTra Systems, which creates training simulators for law enforcement and the military. Media runs in Wallace's family. His father Roger, who died in 2021, was a communications professor at the University of Scranton and taught classes in radio production.

Wallace started Street Relations in Los Angeles in 2007. Over the years, he amassed a diverse client list, including Travis Allen, a California state assembly candidate, and Dr. David Alessi, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. Wallace has also represented a number of substance-abuse recovery groups, including a now-shuttered addiction recovery center in New Jersey and a nonprofit that helps mothers struggling with addiction and mental illness. He's also worked with Heather Hayes & Associates, a Georgia-based concierge service for addiction recovery. Wallace is now based in Dripping Springs, Texas.

In 2020, Paramount Pictures hired Wallace to oversee a substance-abuse treatment program for Margera, a stuntman who was part of the "Jackass" franchise. In his lawsuit against Paramount, which was eventually settled on undisclosed terms, Margera said that Paramount required him to participate in the program in order to remain involved in the production of the movie "Jackass Forever." The lawsuit says Wallace assembled a team that included his client Heather Hayes.

Margera alleged that the treatment program was "psychological torture," comparing it to Britney Spears' conservatorship. He said he was required to have daily FaceTime calls with Wallace, during which Margera had to take "a cocktail of pills" that left him "physically and mentally drained, depressed, and a shell of his former self."

At the time, Margera believed that Wallace had the final say on which medications were prescribed to him based on Wallace's "repeated statements" that he was in charge of the program, per the complaint. But Wallace was not qualified to manage his treatment program, Margera said later in his lawsuit. Wallace didn't have the bachelor's degree in biology from Fordham that he claimed to have, the complaint says. In a supplemental declaration, Wallace called the suggestion that he had lied "offensive and irresponsible." He told the court he'd dropped out of Fordham due to a "family emergency" and transferred to the University of Scranton. His "understanding," he said, was that he had fulfilled Fordham's graduation requirements. Fordham confirmed to BI that Wallace attended between 1989 and 1993 but did not graduate.

In an affidavit, Wallace said he had more than 17 years of experience working in the substance-abuse and behavioral-health fields and had worked with treatment centers, first responders, and law enforcement to create treatment programs. He said he'd also worked as a crisis and wellness consultant on hundreds of cases, including for celebrities and movie studios. "I am often brought in on cases," Wallace wrote, "where previous treatment and recovery attempts have failed."

Lively's lawsuit says Wallace was retained by The Agency Group PR firm, which was founded by Melissa Nathan in 2024 and represents clients including Drake, Johnny Depp, and Hybe America, an entertainment company run by Scooter Braun. Nathan, whom Baldoni hired as a crisis publicist after negative rumors started swirling around the movie, was working alongside the director's longtime publicist Jennifer Abel.

In an August 6 text message to Abel and Baldoni's business partner, Jamey Heath, Melissa Nathan provided quotes for two unnamed digital teams that she said she'd used in the past, according to Lively's suit. The services included a "website (to discuss), full reddit, full social account take downs, full social crisis team on hand for anything," as well as starting "threads of theories" and social fan engagement to help "change narrative." Nathan wrote of the proposed social media work: "All of this will be most importantly untraceable."

A few days later, Nathan texted Abel a message she said was from Wallace: "We are crushing it on Reddit."

While some social media accounts accused Baldoni's team of using bots to amplify pro-Baldoni content, Nathan texted Baldoni that they did not do so because it would've been too obvious.

Lively's lawsuit says that on August 9, the day "It Ends With Us" was released, Abel texted the team a screenshot of a woman's post accusing Baldoni of exploiting her friend for his 2016 documentary, "My Last Days," for which he interviewed people with terminal illnesses. According to Lively's complaint, the woman's post said that none of the documentary's proceeds benefited the subjects and that Baldoni misportrayed her friend's hometown.

"I'm assuming this is not true in the slightest," Abel wrote, adding, "Either way, we've flagged to Jed and his team for more serious action on the social side."

Later that month, according to Lively's lawsuit, an employee of Nathan's firm texted Abel and Nathan: "Let us chat to Jed as well on this" about another negative post circulating about Baldoni.

Whatever Wallace was doing, Baldoni's team seemed pleased with it. The day after "It Ends With Us" hit theaters, one Agency Group publicist texted the team that they had "started to see a shift on social, due largely to Jed and his team's efforts to shift the narrative towards shining a spotlight on Blake and Ryan."

Baldoni's team denied going on the offensive against Lively, but it's not unheard of to use social media to curry favor in the midst of controversy. Filippo Menczer, the director of Indiana University's Observatory on Social Media, said social media manipulation services are "everywhere" in the entertainment world. Anyone can pay to have content shared, reposted, commented on, or upvoted. Once this artificial engagement kicks off, the content can go viral on its own as real people engage with it, Menczer added. It's possible to detect the existence of these campaigns, he said, but finding out who's behind them is another story.

While some platforms may require a phone number to enlist their services, people can use disposable numbers, and a device's IP address can be rerouted through a VPN, Menczer said. "There is no way to know who's behind them," he said. "OK, if you're the FBI, if you're some other powerful agency, there is."

One Los Angeles-based crisis publicist said the Lively-Baldoni blowup is not ideal for someone like Wallace.

"I imagine Jed has no interest in having his name out there," the publicist said. "I imagine all his work is word of mouth and he doesn't want to be known, because if he's the guy who makes things untraceable, that's the value."

• SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has been a champion of AI for years.

• The Japanese conglomerate has invested millions in some of Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies.
• Son joined OpenAI and Oracle to announce a $500 billion joint investment in US AI projects.

Masayoshi Son is the CEO and founder of tech and telecommunications giant SoftBank, and is worth an estimated $16.2 billion.

Through SoftBank and the $100 billion Vision Fund, Son has invested millions in some of Silicon Valley's biggest tech companies, including Uber, Slack, Amazon, Tesla, and Netflix. Softbank was the biggest investor in WeWork, losing more than $4.7 billion after the coworking company's failed IPO. 

In November 2024, SoftBank reported quarterly profit of 1.18 trillion yen, or $7.7 billion at the time. It was the firm's biggest profit in two years; revenue was boosted by Son's big bets on AI.

Over the years, Son has been a big proponent of the tech, and has invested billions, including in OpenAI.

Now, Son's company is partnering with other tech leaders to fund a $500 billion investment in US AI. He joined President Donald Trump, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle CTO Larry Ellison on January 21 to announce Stargate, a project that seeks to build US AI infrastructure and create jobs.

Here's a look at Son's life, career, investments, and real-estate portfolio.

Son was born in 1957 to Korean immigrants on the Japanese island of Kyushu.

The 67-year-old CEO was one of four brothers, and his father worked at restaurants, farms, and fisheries.

In 1972, when he was 16, Son met one of his business idols.

He met McDonald's Japan founder Den Fujita, who encouraged him to go study in the United States. Son took his advice and moved to San Francisco the next year to continue high school, Bloomberg reported.

Son went on to study computer science and economics at the University of California at Berkeley.

Before he was 21 years old, Son sold his first company, a multilingual translator bought by Sharp for about $1 million, according to Bloomberg.

In the 1980s, Son founded SoftBank, a company that today pours billions of dollars of capital into tech startups, including through its Vision Fund.

Through its main investment vehicle, the Vision Fund, SoftBank has invested in major tech companies like Uber, WeWork, DoorDash, and Chinese e-commerce retailer Alibaba.

Son's investment strategies are considered unconventional in Silicon Valley.

The size of Son's $100 billion Vision Fund and its investment strategies have shocked Silicon Valley investors, per Bloomberg. 

In early 2019, Fast Company called Son "the most powerful person in Silicon Valley" for his ambitious vision — and financial means — to transform industries from real estate to food to transportation through his investments in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Son's talks with Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman helped raise $100 billion for the Vision Fund.

Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, met with Son in 2018, and their talks led to the formation of a solar energy project that seeks to develop more energy storage systems and create more jobs in Saudi Arabia, according to an announcement.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund is the SoftBank Vision Fund's largest backer, having contributed $45 billion of the fund's $100 billion bankroll, Bloomberg reported.

The SoftBank CEO is known for paying his executives handsomely — and he's far from the highest-paid person at the company.

Six of SoftBanks' top executives made $83 million combined (9.1 billion yen) in compensation in 2018, while Son's salary rose to about $2.1 million (229 million yen), according to Bloomberg.

"The range of executive salaries in Japan has gone up, but compensation in the billions of yen is still unheard of beyond a handful of global companies," Noriko Watanabe, a partner at Heidrick & Struggles, an executive search company, told Bloomberg in 2019.

The head of SoftBank's Vision Fund made $15 million in 2019 — despite the fund losing billions of dollars — while its COO made more than $19 million, per Reuters. Son himself made just under $2 million.

Son owns millions of dollars worth of property in Tokyo, where SoftBank is headquartered.

In 2013, he spent $326 million on Tokyo's landmark Tiffany Building in the Ginza luxury shopping district, per Reuters. He reportedly sold the building in 2020 for an undisclosed amount.

He also owns a $117.5 million Silicon Valley estate that comes with a 9,000-square-foot house, a 1,117-square-foot pool house, a detached library, a swimming pool, a tennis court, and formal gardens, Forbes wrote in 2013. Son reportedly bought the Woodside, California, property in 2012 from private equity investor Tully Friedman.

Son is married and has at least two children, but he keeps his family life private.

The CEO married Masami Ohno, the daughter of a prominent Japanese doctor, while they were both students at UC Berkeley, The Seoul Times reported. The couple reportedly have two daughters, but little information about the family can be found online.

The SoftBank CEO reportedly has personal relationships with billionaire CEOs and entrepreneurs.

Son has ties to Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Rupert Murdoch, and Tadashi Yanai. He has visited Ellison's Silicon Valley home, where he met Steve Jobs, per Bloomberg.

Yanai sat on SoftBank's board of directors until he stepped down in December 2019.

Son reportedly once had a close relationship with Adam Neumann, the cofounder and former CEO of WeWork, in which SoftBank was once the biggest investor.

Neumann told Business Insider in a 2019 interview that he and his wife, Rebekah, call Son "Yoda," in reference to the "Star Wars" character.

"He is Yoda," Neumann said. "He has the Force with him."

But WeWork's valuation plummeted amid its failed IPO attempt in September 2019. Son reportedly "lost faith" in Neumann and wanted him demoted, the Financial Times reported. A couple of days later, Neumann stepped down as CEO.

SoftBank took control of WeWork in a deal that gave Neumann almost $1.7 billion and required him to step down as chairman of the board, though Neumann actually walked away with less than half that amount in cash and stock, plus some other benefits, the WSJ reported. Son later said on an earnings call that he felt "foolish" for investing $18.5 billion into WeWork.

In 2019, SoftBank dumped its nearly 5% stake in chip-maker Nvidia — another stumble.

SoftBank sold its 4.9% stake in Nvidia in 2019 for about $4 billion. If it hadn't, the position might've been worth more than $175 billion today.

In May 2019, SoftBank announced the creation of a second Vision Fund, after having already spent more than half of the first one.

"Various investors from around the world are telling us they definitely want to participate in Vision Fund 2. We will set it up soon," Son said at the beginning of May 2019, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal later reported that Son had trouble raising money for this new fund, a claim SoftBank disputed. 

"While we don't comment on fundraising, much of The Wall Street Journal's reporting on investor sentiment is misleading and even inaccurate," a SoftBank spokesperson told Business Insider in an email in 2019.

In July 2019, the company announced plans for $108 billion worth of investments in its second Vision Fund.

SoftBank confirmed that Apple, Foxconn, and others would invest in the fund, as well as Microsoft for the first time, BI previously reported.

Although Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund was the largest backer of the first Vision Fund, having contributed $45 billion of the fund's $100 billion bankroll, Saudi Arabia was missing from the list of backers for the new fund. Vision Fund 2 has a size of $56 billion as of 2025, according to Pitchbook. Its recent investments include ChatGPT maker OpenAI.

But SoftBank suffered following WeWork's downfall and amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In April 2020, SoftBank said its Vision Fund would suffer a $17 billion annual operating loss.

SoftBank-backed companies including Oyo, Uber, Zume, and WeWork laid off over 29,000 people in 2020. In September that year, SoftBank's market value took a roughly $10 billion hit after The Wall Street Journal reported that it had been making massive, risky investments in tech stocks.

In June 2020, as protests over racial injustice and the death of George Floyd swept the globe, SoftBank announced the launch of a $100 million fund to invest in entrepreneurs of color.

The fund was overseen by SoftBank's chief operating officer Marcelo Claure and two black tech leaders: TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot and Pindrop cofounder Paul Judge.

"When it comes to diversity, SoftBank absolutely has to do better as an employer, investor, and partner. But we can't just talk — we have to put money behind it, set plans, and hold ourselves accountable," Claure wrote in an email to employees. "This fund will only invest in companies led by founders and entrepreneurs of color."

The announcement came on the ninth day of protests over the death of George Floyd, a black man who was killed by a white police officer, which started in Minneapolis and spread to all 50 states and countries including England, France, Germany, New Zealand, and the Philippines.

Softbank sold its Opportunity Fund to Claure and Judge in 2023.

Despite his company's losses post-pandemic, Son remained optimistic.

On an earnings call in May 2020, Son talked about how the coronavirus created a valley — the "Valley of Coronavirus" as he called it — that some companies would fall into, but other "unicorn" companies would be able to fly out of and succeed.

"Things will probably get worse," Son said in the call, per The New York Times. "But we will keep working hard to survive."

In August 2020, after three quarters of devastating losses, SoftBank finally reported a profit again and proceeded to make investments in Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet, and Netflix.

SoftBank had another tough year in 2022.

SoftBank earned a reputation of writing big checks for cash-burning tech startups, but rising interest rates challenged that strategy as investors became more cautious of such investments in 2022. In an earnings call that year, SoftBank reported a nearly $10 billion in loss on its venture investments for the quarter.

"We have to be in defensive mode," Son said as he announced that subsequent calls would be handled by SoftBank's CFO.

In 2020, Softbank announced that it would sell its UK-based chip designer Arm to Nvidia for $40 billion, but the deal fell through in 2022 amid regulatory pressure. And in May 2023, its tech investment unit reported $32 billion in losses for its full year.

SoftBank sold its Alibaba stake in 2023.

SoftBank first invested $20 million in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2000. It realized a $72 billion gain on its investments in Alibaba over the course of 23 years.

Son reportedly spent recent years unwinding Softbank's stake in the Chinese tech giant, however, amid local government crackdowns on corporates and as the Vision Fund lost billions.

Son's interest in AI began paying off in 2024.

Son took a bold stance on AI in 2023, slamming its doubters at SoftBank's World corporate conference that year. His beliefs started to pay off as AI picked up steam in the tech industry. 

Arm, the chip maker that SoftBank acquired in 2016, aims to put its products in the hands of tech companies to power their GenAI projects.

"Arm is central to our AI shift," CFO Yoshimitsu Goto said in May 2024.

"We have moved from Alibaba, and are focused on leading the AI revolution," Goto said during an earnings presentation in February 2024.

SoftBank invested $500 million in OpenAI in an October 2024 funding round.

The Japanese conglomerate was part of a $6.6 billion funding round with a $500 million investment in the ChatGPT maker. Son's commitment to an AI-powered future began before OpenAI became a household name; SoftBank's second Vision Fund backed the startup.

SoftBank became Nvidia's first customer for its Blackwell chips in November 2024.

The Blackwell chips will be used to create an AI supercomputer in Japan, the companies said in November 2024. Demand for Nvidia's chips has exploded since AI took the tech industry by storm.

"Together we're going to build Japan's largest AI factory," Huang said at the company's AI summit in Tokyo.

The Blackwell chips are expected to ship in the first quarter of 2025.

SoftBank will invest $100 billion into US projects over the next 4 years.

Donald Trump and Son came together in December 2024 to announce the deal, which Trump said will generate 100,000 jobs in the US. The investment will go towards building up the AI infrastructure, Associated Press reported.

Son reportedly pledged $50 billion in investments when Trump was elected in 2016.

Trump announced a $500 billion AI infrastructure investment plan involving SoftBank on January 21.

Son joined OpenAI's Sam Altman, Oracle's Larry Ellison, and Trump to announce the planned private-sector investment. The president said the three companies would work together to boost AI infrastructure in the US in a project they're calling Stargate.

SoftBank's stock rose over 9% in Japan after the announcement.

"Together these world-leading technology giants are announcing the formation of Stargate," Trump said.

He added, "Put that name down in your books, because I think you're going to hear a lot about it."

Editor's note: January 24, 2025: This story was updated to clarify that Neumann eventually received a smaller exit package from SoftBank than the originally planned $1.7 billion.

• The Alexander brothers have been hit with federal sex-trafficking charges.
• Oren and Tal Alexander are top real-estate agents. Police also arrested a third brother.
• The brothers earlier denied the accusations through an attorney.

The Alexander brothers were arrested on Wednesday on federal charges of sex trafficking. Prosecutors accused the siblings of operating a "long-running sex trafficking scheme," according to an unsealed indictment.

The New York prosecutors said in the indictment that Tal and Oren — who are among the nation's top luxury real-estate agents — and their brother, Alon, collaborated for more than a decade with others both "known and unknown" to "repeatedly and violently drug, sexually assault, and rape dozens of victims."

The indictment said the brothers used their wealth and prominent positions "to create opportunities to rape and sexually assault women" in Manhattan and Miami in a scheme that began in 2010 and lasted more than 10 years.

At times, prosecutors said the brothers planned out the sexual assaults in advance "using the promise of luxury experiences, travel, and accommodations to lure and entice women to locations where they were forcibly raped or sexually assaulted, sometimes by multiple men, including one or more of the Alexander brothers."

Other times, the Alexander brothers chose their victims by chance, prosecutors said.

The real-estate duo, in particular, the indictment said, "used their prominent positions in the industry to induce other women to attend events and parties, and to meet other women at those events and parties, whom one or more of the defendants later sexually assaulted."

Prosecutors alleged the Alexander brothers worked together and with other men to arrange events and both domestic and international trips that they used as "bait" to "recruit, entice, harbor, transport, and maintain multiple women."

Ahead of events and trips, the Alexander brothers would secure drugs, including hallucinogenic mushrooms, cocaine, and GHB, which they agreed to provide women, the indictment says.

On multiple occasions, they and others would "surreptitiously" drug women's drinks, prosecutors said.

"At times, the defendants physically restrained and held down their victims during the rapes and sexual assaults and ignored screams and explicit requests to stop," the indictment said.

Oren Alexander, Alon Alexander, and their cousin, Ohad Fisherman, were also separately charged in Florida with sexual battery in three incidents in Miami involving three different women in 2016, 2017, and 2021.

Katherine Fernandez Rundle, the state attorney for Miami-Dade County in Florida, announced the charges in a joint news conference with the Miami Beach police department on Wednesday.

Florida prosecutors charged Oren Alexander with three counts of sexual battery, with one of the charges involving multiple perpetrators and classified as a second-degree felony. Alon Alexander was charged with one count of sexual battery involving multiple perpetrators, a second-degree felony. Fisherman was charged with one count of sexual battery by multiple perpetrators.

In the first incident in 2016, Oren and Alon took turns raping a woman at Alon's Miami Beach apartment while Fisherman held her down, the state attorney said. The woman told police that after the assault, Oren asked her to shower and Alon told her not to tell anybody what had happened. The woman told her two sisters and a friend about the assault but did not contact police at the time because she feared retribution from the men, the state attorney said.

Prosecutors said the second incident, which involved only Oren, took place after a woman attended a real-estate event with him in 2017. After the event, Oren invited her to his apartment, where he gave her a glass of wine, after which she said she felt weak and out of control of her body. She found herself on Oren's bed with Oren on top of her; she could not move or speak or push him off. He then raped her, she said.

In the third incident in 2021, a woman met Oren at a dinner she attended with a friend, the state attorney said. Oren invited the woman and her friend to his house on Flamingo Drive. At his house, Oren brought the woman to a couch next to his bedroom, removed her shoes, and started kissing her. The woman said she felt uncomfortable as Oren became aggressive. When she tried to pull away from him, he ripped off the top of her dress, leaving her naked on top. She went to his bedroom to grab a T-shirt from his closet and tried to leave the house. But when she got downstairs, she realized she could not leave because the doors were remote-controlled. She went back upstairs to ask Oren to let her out. There, Oren pushed her onto his bed, held her down with his knees, and assaulted her as she told him no, prosecutors said.

Rundle, the state attorney, thanked the "brave women" for disclosing what happened to them.

"These women are strong and they're resilient," she said. "They are an example to anyone else out there who has experienced sex violence."

Local news footage showed Oren and Alon being escorted into the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami on Wednesday. Tal, who was not mentioned in the Florida news conference, was being held at a separate jail, Local 10 News reported.

The brothers' arrest follows years of sexual-assault allegations by multiple women.

Deanna Paul, a New York attorney for Tal Alexander, confirmed to Business Insider that police arrested the brothers in Miami on Wednesday morning but declined to comment further.

The brothers have "strongly" denied any wrongdoing, James Cinque, a New York-based attorney, told Business Insider in September.

"We have asked them not to comment while these matters work their way through the legal system," Cinque said, "but are comfortable that they will ultimately be vindicated."

The FBI began investigating the Alexander brothers after The Real Deal first reported in June that two women had filed civil lawsuits against Oren and Alon earlier this year.

The women, Kate Whiteman and Rebecca Mandel, said the brothers took turns raping them in two separate incidents in 2010 and 2012, respectively. About 10 days after The Real Deal's article was published, another woman, Angelica Parker, filed a lawsuit accusing Alon and Tal of raping her in their New York City apartment in 2012 while Oren watched. In July, a fourth woman, the actor and comedian Renée Willett, filed a lawsuit against Oren, accusing him of drugging and raping her, also in his SoHo apartment in 2015.

"We are glad to hear that there will finally be some measure of accountability for the Alexander brothers and justice for their many victims," David E. Gottlieb, a partner at Wigdor, the law firm representing Parker, said in a statement to BI. "We applaud all the survivors who have had the strength and courage to speak up about their unimaginable experiences after years of pain and suffering."

A day after the criminal indictments, another woman, going by "Jane Doe," filed a lawsuit in New York against Alon and Oren, accusing them both of raping her in 2016.

The lawsuit said Alon invited the plaintiff to a barbecue and pool party in Miami on New Year's Eve but that when she arrived she realized she was the only guest. She said Fisherman held her down while Oren raped her with Alon watching. Alon then raped her, the lawsuit said.

Lawyers for Alon, Oren, and Fisherman did not respond to a request for comment from BI on the new lawsuit.

Alon and Oren also appeared in court in Miami on Thursday, where a judge ordered they be held without bond, The New York Times reported. Alon had told the judge his wife was expected to give birth to their first child "any day now" and that she was counting on him to be with her. The next hearing is set for Friday.

At a press conference on Wednesday announcing the indictment, Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, called on additional victims to speak out.

"Our investigation is far from over," Williams said. "If you have been a victim of the alleged sexual violence perpetrated by Alon Alexander, Oren Alexander, or Tal Alexander — or if you know anything about their alleged crimes — we urge you to come forward."

Since June, more than a dozen women have said they were raped or assaulted by the three brothers, sometimes in tandem. Business Insider spoke to four women who described being assaulted or feeling coerced into sexual encounters, including one who said Tal, now 38, raped her in Las Vegas in 2017.

Business Insider's investigation found that it was an open secret in wealthy social circles for years that the Alexander twins, 37, and their older brother Tal, mistreated women.

Oren and Tal started their real-estate careers at Douglas Elliman before launching their own brokerage, Official, in 2022. Alon works for the family's security company in Florida.

December 12, 2024: This story has been updated to include a new lawsuit that was filed a day after the criminal indictments as well as Alon and Oren's court appearance on Thursday.