SoftBank books $4.2 billion gain on OpenAI bet, boosting its Vision Fund

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 bets.

The Japanese giant said it made a $4.2 billion gain on the value of its OpenAI investment in its fiscal third quarter, which runs to the end of December, offsetting losses stemming from the share price declines of Coupang and Chinese ride-hailing app Didi.

The company also said investment losses were impacted by a markdown in its stake in TikTok creator ByteDance.

This helped SoftBank Group book fiscal third-quarter net profit of 248.6 billion yen ($1.6 billion), which missed analyst estimates, but was a reversal of the loss seen in the same period last year.

With the Vision Fund, SoftBank has invested in AI companies it believes will be category winners, seeking to position itself at the center of the technology’s development.

In 2024, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son said the world was a decade away from artificial superintelligence — or ASI — which he described as technology 10,000 times more intelligent than humans.

During a presentation on Thursday, Yoshimitsu Goto, chief finanical officer at SoftBank Group, said 60% of the company’s assets are now “ASI-oriented investments.”

SoftBank’s AI push has involved a more than $30 billion investment in ChatGPT developer OpenAI as one of its core companies. SoftBank owns approximately 11% of OpenAI.

SoftBank said it had seen a $17 billion gain on its OpenAI investment during the April to December period. The gain shows the “decision on investment was successful,” Goto said during the presentation.

OpenAI is reportedly raising a new funding round of around $100 billion. Though Goto said Thursday that “nothing has been decided” regarding whether SoftBank will invest more money into OpenAI. SoftBank would not rule out further investments in OpenAI however, as long as the valuation remains prudent, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.

OpenAI also faces increased competition from the likes of Google and Anthropic. In particular, Anthropic has taken public swipes at OpenAI over the latter’s decision to test ads in ChatGPT and its spending plans.

Anthropic’s Claude Code and Claude Cowork have gained traction among business customers. Last week, OpenAI chief Sam Altman told employees that ChatGPT is “back to exceeding 10% monthly growth,” CNBC reported, while Codex, its Claude Code rival, was also seeing strong growth.

Goto was asked several times about OpenAI, including a question on why SoftBank finds the AI firm attractive to invest in, especially after the company issued a “code red” last year in the face of rising competition.

“We assume OpenAI will be able to lead this industry and this era, and we are quite convinced. So that’s [why] we are making an investment in this company,” Goto said.

According to SoftBank executives, OpenAI is in an early stage of monetizing its product with future revenue streams expected from enterprise sales, hardware and advertisements, all potentially adding to the company’s growth, a person familiar with the matter said.

Investors have been focused on how SoftBank will fund its continued investments, particularly in OpenAI, which currently remains unprofitable.

The Japanese investment giant has been trimming its stakes in other companies to funnel money toward OpenAI. In October, SoftBank sold its entire stake in Nvidia for $5.83 billion and between June and December, it sold $12.73 billion worth of T-Mobile stock.

SoftBank has also taken out loans backed by its other holdings, such as chip designer Arm.

SoftBank said Thursday it has created a new segment in its earnings report called the “AI Computing Segment.” This will include chip designer Arm, as well as Graphcore and Ampere, two other semiconductor businesses it has acquired.

The segment lost 91.8 billion yen in the nine months ending in December due to a higher headcount and acquisition-related costs associated with Ampere, SoftBank said.

SoftBank sees Arm and its other chip investments as key to playing in areas from robotics to driverless cars and data centers.

SoftBank shares have jumped this week after strong results at its telecommunications unit and a rally in the price of Arm’s stock.