Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group announced on Tuesday, November 11, that it had sold all of its shares in Nvidia in October, totaling $5.83 billion. This unexpected move has surprised the market and signals SoftBank’s strategic adjustment as it prepares to focus its capital on its own AI projects rather than continuing to hold shares in Nvidia, which has been consistently growing. Some analysts view this decision as a shift from SoftBank being a passive investor in the AI field to a more proactive and strategic role.
In its financial report, SoftBank revealed that its net profit for the second quarter of this fiscal year (July to September) doubled to 2.5 trillion yen (approximately $16.6 billion), far exceeding analysts’ expectations and more than doubling from the same period last year, when it was at 1.18 trillion yen.
The remarkable profit performance of SoftBank is mainly attributed to its successful investments in the technology sector. The “SoftBank Vision Fund” under the group achieved investment gains of 3.5 trillion yen, with a significant contribution of 2.16 trillion yen from the valuation gains of its investment in OpenAI.
SoftBank has become a significant participant in the US President Trump’s “Stargate” project, planning to invest $30 billion in OpenAI and collaborate with companies like TSMC to establish a $1 trillion AI manufacturing hub in Arizona.
In March of this year, SoftBank Group acquired IC design company Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion in all-cash, allowing SoftBank to have up to 1,000 professional semiconductor engineers specializing in designing advanced chips for data centers.
SoftBank’s stock price has surged by about 100% over the past year and rose by 78% in the three months leading up to September. The company also announced a stock split of “1 for 4” set to take place on January 1st next year.
Despite SoftBank being a major beneficiary in the wave of AI infrastructure development, investors are increasingly concerned that the massive capital investment may not yield sufficient high profits to justify the investment, possibly leading to the emergence of an “AI technology bubble”.
The question of which companies will ultimately benefit from the construction of large data centers and other AI infrastructure remains to be observed.