Japanese technology giant SoftBank said Tuesday it has sold its stake in Nvidia, raising $5.8 billion to pour into other investments. It also reported its profit nearly tripled in the first half of this fiscal year from a year earlier.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. said it sold the stake in Silicon Vally-based Nvidia in October, a move that reflects its shift in focus to OpenAI, owner of the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT.
SoftBank reported its profit in April-September soared to about 2.5 trillion yen (about $13 billion). Its sales for the six month period rose 7.7% year-on-year to 3.7 trillion yen ($24 billion), it said.
The company’s fortunes tend to fluctuate because it invests in a range of ventures, including through its tech-focused Vision Funds. Those recently have paid off.
In February, SoftBank’s chairman Masayoshi Son joined Trump, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle in announcing a major investment of up to $500 billion in a project to develop artificial intelligence called Stargate.
SoftBank has invested tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI. The two companies also plan to provide AI services in Japan.
Selling SoftBank’s stake in Nvidia reflects Son’s shift in strategy and also nets his company a healthy profit thanks to the recent runup in Nvidia’s market value.
Nvidia recently become the first $5 trillion company, just three months after it broke through the $4 trillion barrier. It plans a $100 billion investment in OpenAI as part of a partnership that will add at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia AI data centers to ramp up OpenAI’s computing power.
The chip maker and other winners in the frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology have been driving much of this year’s rally in share prices. Critics say stock prices of the tech giants have soared too high and too fast in the mania around AI, drawing comparisons to the 2000 dot-com bubble that ultimately burst.
SoftBank and Nvidia still have strong relations since various ventures that SoftBank invests in use Nvidia technology.
SoftBank also has investments in Arm Holdings and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., computer chip makers that like Nvidia are benefitting greatly from the growth of AI.
SoftBank stocks have nearly doubled in value in the past year. They gained nearly 2% Tuesday.
Nvidia’s shares fell 1.3% in premarket trading early Tuesday. They jumped 5.8% on Monday.
Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama
—Yuri Kageyama, AP Business Writer