SoftBank's AI investments deliver $1.62 billion profit as OpenAI stake drives turnaround
8 Sources
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SoftBank's $4.2bn OpenAI gain lifts quarterly profits as AI exposure deepens -- company swings back to profitability in Q3 results
Vision Fund divergence and expanding data center commitments show how SoftBank is aligning its capital with AI. SoftBank swung back to profitability in its fiscal third quarter, reporting net income of 248.6 billion yuan -- roughly $1.6 billion -- for the three months ending December. These
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SoftBank Vision Fund books $2.4 billion quarterly gain boosted by OpenAI bet
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attend an event to pitch AI for businesses in Tokyo, Japan Feb. 3, 2025. SoftBank posted a $2.4 billion gain at its Vision Fund in the December quarter as a jump in the value of its OpenAI investment helped offset losses in some of its other
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Japan's technology investor SoftBank Group sees profitability return on AI boom
TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese technology and telecoms giant SoftBank Group Corp. swung back into profitability in the last quarter of 2025 as its investments in OpenAI and other ventures paid off, the company said Thursday. SoftBank Group reported a 248.6 billion yen ($1.62 billion) profit for the
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'Our investments are beginning to pay off': AI boom brings SoftBank back into the black | Fortune
Japanese technology and telecoms giant SoftBank Group Corp. swung back into profitability in the last quarter of 2025 as its investments in OpenAI and other ventures paid off, the company said Thursday. SoftBank Group reported a 248.6 billion yen ($1.62 billion) profit for the October-December
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Japan's technology investor SoftBank Group sees profitability return on AI boom
TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese technology and telecoms giant SoftBank Group Corp. swung back into profitability in the last quarter of 2025 as its investments in OpenAI and other ventures paid off, the company said Thursday. SoftBank Group reported a 248.6 billion yen ($1.62 billion) profit for the
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SoftBank posts fourth straight quarterly profit of $1.6 billion on OpenAI gains - The Economic Times
Japan's SoftBank Group said on Thursday it logged a net profit of 248.6 billion yen ($1.62 billion) in the October-December quarter, boosted by the rising valuation of its investment in OpenAI.Japan's SoftBank Group said on Thursday it logged a net profit of 248.6 billion yen ($1.62 billion) in the
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SoftBank Returns to Profit in Q4 as OpenAI Valuation Boosts Investment Gains
SoftBank reported net income attributable to owners of the parent of 248.587 billion yen for the three months ended December 31, 2025. A year earlier, it reported a loss of 369.165 billion yen for the same period. SoftBank linked a large part of its recent investment gains to OpenAI. In its
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SoftBank Posts Quarterly Profit on $4.2 Billion Gain From OpenAI
SoftBank Group reported a quarterly net profit, driven by billions of dollars of gains from its OpenAI investment. The Japanese technology investment company said Thursday that it booked valuation gains of $4.2 billion from its investment in the ChatGPT maker for the three months ended
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SoftBank Group swung back to profitability with $1.62 billion in net income for Q3, reversing a $369 billion yen loss from the previous year. The turnaround was driven primarily by a $4.2 billion gain from its OpenAI stake, part of $17 billion in total gains from the ChatGPT-maker. The technology investor sold its Nvidia position for $5.8 billion to deepen its focus on AI infrastructure and private AI platforms.
SoftBank Return to Profitability Powered by OpenAI Stake
SoftBank Group delivered a dramatic financial reversal in its fiscal third quarter, posting net income of 248.6 billion yen, roughly $1.62 billion, for the October-December period
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. This marks a stark turnaround from the 369 billion yen loss the technology investor SoftBank recorded in the same quarter a year earlier. Quarterly sales rose 8% to 1.98 trillion yen, approximately $12.9 billion, signaling growing momentum across the company's portfolio4
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Source: Analytics Insight
The profitability surge was primarily driven by strategic investments in artificial intelligence, particularly a $4.2 billion gain from OpenAI stake
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. This gain represents part of a broader $17 billion in investment gains SoftBank has recorded on the ChatGPT-maker in the financial year to date. Strip out that contribution, and the quarterly results would tell a very different story about the company's underlying performance.
Source: ET
Vision Fund Divergence Reveals Strategic Shift
The SoftBank Vision Fund gain highlights a critical divergence in the company's portfolio strategy. Vision Fund 1 recorded a $4.1 billion loss in the quarter, weighed down by declines in publicly-traded holdings like Coupang, which suffered a significant data breach
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. Meanwhile, Vision Fund 2, which includes OpenAI, generated a $6.6 billion gain, more than offsetting those losses. The Vision Fund posted an overall $2.4 billion gain for the December quarter, with the jump in OpenAI valuation helping offset losses in other bets2
.This split reveals how SoftBank's quarterly profit is now increasingly tied to how private AI platforms are valued, rather than public market volatility. The older portfolio, heavy with late-stage tech companies exposed to market fluctuations, faces serious pressure while the newer fund, anchored by OpenAI, delivers gains at a scale large enough to dominate consolidated earnings.
Aggressive Portfolio Reshaping for AI Boom
To fund its deepening AI investments, SoftBank has aggressively reshaped its balance sheet. The company sold its entire position in Nvidia for $5.8 billion in October, along with $12.7 billion worth of T-Mobile shares
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. CEO Masayoshi Son effectively traded SoftBank's exposure to public, liquid assets for private AI platforms and associated infrastructure.
Source: Tom's Hardware
SoftBank has invested nearly $35 billion in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, securing an ownership interest of about 11%
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. This compares to Microsoft's near-27% stake. Reports indicate SoftBank is in talks to commit another $30 billion in a funding round that could push OpenAI's valuation to $750 billion1
.Building an AI Hardware and Infrastructure Empire
Beyond OpenAI, SoftBank is assembling what appears to be a comprehensive AI hardware strategy. The company retains a majority position in Arm, whose semiconductor architectures underpin much of the world's mobile computing and an expanding share of the server silicon market
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. Last year, SoftBank acquired Ampere, the Arm-based semiconductor design company, for $6.5 billion, making it a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary3
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.The company also acquired Graphcore, the UK AI accelerator startup that developed Intelligence Processing Units as alternatives to GPUs in AI training and machine learning applications. These companies now sit within a new AI Computing Segment alongside Arm
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. Reports suggest Arm is developing a custom CPU to be used by OpenAI itself, tying the hardware and software strategies together.SoftBank is also expanding into robotics, reaching an agreement with ABB to acquire its robotics business for $5.375 billion, though the deal still needs regulatory approval in Europe, China and the U.S.
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Stargate Project and Data Center Ambitions
Masayoshi Son is leading financing efforts for the $500 billion Stargate project in the United States, aimed at scaling AI data centers and infrastructure in partnership with OpenAI, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi-backed DGX
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. The capital intensity of such an undertaking involves land acquisitions, grid interconnections, power contracts, and vast quantities of silicon—all critical for training frontier models and serving them at global scale.Nine-Month Performance and Future Outlook
For the nine months through December, SoftBank posted a 3.17 trillion yen ($20.7 billion) profit, about five times what it recorded in the previous year
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. Nine-month sales edged up nearly 8% to 5.7 trillion yen ($37 billion). "Our investments are beginning to pay off," SoftBank's chief financial officer, Yoshimitsu Goto, told reporters, stressing that gains were coming not just from OpenAI but from a variety of investments, including in Arm4
.SoftBank shares have nearly doubled over the past 12 months as investors seek exposure to OpenAI through the Japanese conglomerate, effectively turning the company into a publicly traded proxy for private AI valuation
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. However, the stock price has fallen 29% from its October peak, reflecting growing concerns about intensifying competition from Google and Anthropic, and the enormous amounts of capital needed to sustain frontier model development. Some analysts caution that counting too much on OpenAI could be risky, given SoftBank's historically erratic financial performance as an aggressive investor in innovative, often fledgling, technology3
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