Marcelo Claure’s CV is full of achievements: founding a multinational mobile phone distributor, executing the complex merger of Sprint and T Mobile and helping drive the fairytale run of Spanish football club Girona, to name just a few.
That’s why it annoys the 53-year-old Bolivian-American billionaire that he is probably best known in the public consciousness for his ties to him We work Cos., the startup that spectacularly imploded after once being valued at $47 billion.
Claure was released from him in 2019 SoftBank Group Corp. CEO Masayoshi Son wants to stabilize the real estate company after it canceled its initial public offering due to a dangerous liquidity crisis. He oversaw the company’s retrenchments, cutting costs and shrinking its footprint, but expressed full confidence that it would bounce back. But the pandemic dealt the company its final blow as it continued to lose billions even at the time of its SPAC listing in late 2021.
Now Claure is building his own investment empire – shaped in equal measure by Son’s wisdom and mistakes – which he describes with an effusive phrase reminiscent of his former employer.
His family office Claure Group is looking for deals in AI and renewable energy (“You can’t be a real investor if you don’t work in AI and climate”) and took a significant stake in the Chinese fast fashion company Shein (“one of the biggest companies”) “Iconic companies of our time”) and thinks about ways to revolutionize soccer in the US after his Girona FC (“probably one of the top teams in the world of soccer”) an unlikely one had success.
Although Claure left SoftBank in 2022 and WeWork filed for bankruptcy last year, the drama surrounding the startup has not gone away. Earlier this month, its founder Adam Neumann emerged as a potential bidder for his gutted former company.
That Neumann, 44, even has the means to make an offer is thanks in part to Claure, who, as WeWork chairman, negotiated an exit package that gave Neumann $291 million in cash plus $578 million for the resale of its WeWork shares and a $430 million non-recourse loan from SoftBank.
Claure, who said Neumann had already asked him for advice on his offer, is unapologetic. “That was the price we had to pay to regain control of the business,” he said in an interview, noting that Son dictated the terms. “Adam didn’t have to give anyone the keys.”
The WeWork debacle underscores the challenge of escaping the shadow of SoftBank, one of the world’s most idiosyncratic investors, which had assets of $413.6 billion at its peak in March 2021. Claure worked for the Japanese company for eight years, first as chief executive officer of portfolio company Sprint, then as chief operating officer of SoftBank.
In this role, he helped implement turnaround plans at Son’s selected companies, some of which were acquired at high prices by the flagship Vision fund and have been doing so ever since crater in value. His stay there made him rich, although not rich enough for his taste. He left after he and Masa couldn’t agree on Claure’s demand for a billion dollar salary.
Jet Setter
On a late January day, the 6-foot-tall Claure sits in a conference room at his office in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District. Dressed entirely in black, his outfit matches the atmospheric, industrial-chic interiors. His stopover in New York is short. Claure, whose primary residence is in Miami, spends much of his time traveling and often presents the rides Xposts pictures from private planes and poses with politicians, business executives, family members and celebrities.
In 2024 alone he has been to Las Vegas for the Super Bowl, Madrid to a Girona game, China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia – where his new electric boat racing team lost to Tom Brady’s – Abu Dhabi, Doha, Brazil, Argentina, Davos, France and several Caribbean islands.
Claure said he has $4 billion in assets in his private company, a figure that includes a variable amount of debt that he declined to specify. With the help of his chief investment officer, former Key Square Group executive Diego Dayenoff, Claure has bet on numerous sectors, including real estate, technology and fashion.
Its most notable investment is Shein, which is preparing for a U.S. initial public offering despite concerns over alleged copyright infringement and sourcing of cotton from China’s Xinjiang region, which has been linked to forced labor.
Last fall, he and Todd Boehlys Eldridge bought a majority stake in an Australian engineering company, Ausenco Ltd., to advance mining. He has a long-term plan to mine lithium in Chile, Argentina and eventually Bolivia. Claire’s homeland is the home of the world biggest Concentration of lithium resources currently controlled by the state.
“Hardly in the history of the world has there been a country that controls a third of the most important raw material that will drive the energy transition,” he said. The Bolivian government has allowed certain private foreign companies to cooperate with its state-owned mine in processing and extraction, but the metal has yet to be produced in commercial quantities.
“I want to ensure that my country uses these assets properly,” Claure said. His dream is for his lithium mines to power an electric car gigafactory in Mexico or Brazil.
LatAm betting
Claure, who once led SoftBank’s Latin America fund, has continued to bet on the region in his solo phase. He founded a venture firm focused on Latin America Bicycle capital in June with his former SoftBank colleague Shu Nyatta and the support of Abu Dhabi State Fund Mubadala. He also bought a large stake in a Brazilian investment firm EB Capital in October.
When it comes to business, he competes with – and in some cases overlaps with – his former employer. For example, both Bicycle and SoftBank’s LatAm fund invested in Brazilian startup Gympass. When Claure left SoftBank, she negotiated to receive a portion of the net proceeds from the Latin America funds. The market value of its portfolio was $6.3 billion as of Dec. 31, up from $6 billion at the end of September.
He said Bicycle and the SoftBank fund worked together on deals and dismissed the notion of a conflict of interest. “I just hope they’re OK,” he said.
Claure praised Son as “a genius” in terms of his foresight world-changing trends like AI. But it angers him that despite its successes – many of which, he is quick to point out, were under his watch – the Vision Fund’s weak returns have tarnished SoftBank’s name.
Claure almost joined the Vision Fund management team in 2019, but changed course after a long time Clashes with CEO Rajeev Misra. Instead, he focused on operations, helping to run Sprint, ARM Holdings Plc, Fortress Investment Group and SoFi Technologies Inc., among others.
Claure’s first assignment for Son was to turn around Sprint, a role that involved navigating the telecommunications company through a thicket of regulatory concerns related to its 2020 merger with T-Mobile, as well as a role in supporting Shein’s global expansion . It also gave him a stake in T-Mobile, now worth more than $1.1 billion.
In a typical perk for SoftBank executives, the company loaned Claure $515 million to buy his stake. The loan is due in July and Claure said he plans to pay it off in full. He said he also owes SoftBank $196 million for loans he received to buy company stock.
At SoftBank, Claure was known as the “ops guy,” the one who executed and implemented things. The very thing that set him apart is what he wants to avoid when running his family office.
“The recurring theme is that we don’t actually run anything,” Claure said of his investments across the world and across industries. “That’s the most successful part of my life, when I have the power to do whatever I want, with whomever I want.”