SoftBank liquidates its stake in NVIDIA for $5.8 billion. Which AI investments is Masayoshi Son turning to?

SoftBank Group, led by Masayoshi Son, announced that it sold its NVIDIA shares in October, bringing in $5.8 billion, which helped the company double its profits in the second fiscal quarter. SoftBank stated that this move was aimed at promoting “asset monetization” to flexibly utilize capital to support future growth and to shift its funds towards other AI fields such as OpenAI.

SoftBank sells NVIDIA and T-Mobile

SoftBank Group led by Masayoshi Son announced that it sold 32.1 million shares of NVIDIA stock for $5.8 billion in October; and sold part of its holdings in T-Mobile for $9.17 billion.

SoftBank had previously liquidated its shares in NVIDIA in 2019 and then bought back in 2020, which was two years before the historic surge triggered by the emergence of ChatGPT. As of the end of March, SoftBank revealed that its holdings in this American chip manufacturer had increased to approximately $3 billion. In this regard alone, SoftBank's sale of its NVIDIA shares for $5.8 billion can be considered a quite successful investment, having nearly doubled its profits in just the past six months.

The SoftBank Vision Fund achieved returns of up to 19 billion dollars.

The sale of equity and the massive earnings of 19 billion dollars obtained from the SoftBank Vision Fund resulted in a net profit of 2.5 trillion yen in the second fiscal quarter, approximately 16.2 billion dollars, far exceeding analysts' average expectation of 418.2 billion yen.

The Vision Fund has been actively advancing into the field of artificial intelligence, investing in and acquiring various companies across the artificial intelligence value chain, from chips to large language models and robotics technology.

SoftBank Group's CFO Yoshimoto Goto stated, “The reason we have achieved such results is that we first invested in OpenAI last September. According to fair value calculations, OpenAI's latest valuation has reached $500 billion, making it one of the highest-valued companies in the world.”

After completing the capital restructuring and SoftBank's investment of $22.5 billion in ChatGPT manufacturer OpenAI, the Japanese company’s ownership stake in OpenAI increased from 4% to 11%.

SoftBank liquidates funds to increase other AI investments.

SoftBank stated that this move is aimed at promoting “asset monetization” to flexibly utilize capital to support future growth.

SoftBank's CFO Yoshihiro Goto stated, “We hope to provide investors with a wealth of investment opportunities while maintaining our financial strength.”

SoftBank will fulfill its commitment to invest $22.5 billion in OpenAI made last December through its Vision Fund II. SoftBank also plans to acquire U.S. chip design company Ampere Computing LLC for $6.5 billion and has agreed to acquire the robotics division of ABB Group for $5.4 billion.

SoftBank's stock price fell by more than 6%, holding popular AI stocks such as OpenAI and Perplexity.

SoftBank's company now has a portfolio that includes some of the hottest artificial intelligence companies globally, such as OpenAI, ByteDance, and Perplexity. These stakes have boosted SoftBank's book earnings and propelled its stock price to soar by 127% this year.

However, SoftBank's stock price opened down more than 6% today, highlighting investors' continued concerns about the excessive valuations of tech stocks.

This article discusses SoftBank liquidating its NVIDIA holdings for $5.8 billion. What AI strategies is Masayoshi Son shifting towards? Originally appeared in Chain News ABMedia.