On February 3, 2025, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attended an event to promote AI for business.
Kim Kyung Hoon | Reuters
Softbank posted a $46 billion annual gain on its Vision Fund, primarily due to a significant increase in the value of its OpenAI investment.
Major Japanese companies have invested more than $30 billion in OpenAI, and their investment returns in the company totaled $45 billion in the year ended March.
In the three months to the end of March, the Vision Fund made about $20 billion in profits, almost all of which came from OpenAI as SoftBank suffered losses on other investments. CoupangDiDi Global, Klarna.
SoftBank is positioning itself at the center of the artificial intelligence boom by investing in a variety of AI and chip companies, with Sam Altman’s OpenAI at the center of it.
SoftBank has committed to investing more than $60 billion in OpenAI, which will give it approximately 13% ownership in the company, the company announced in February. More than $30 billion of that has already been invested.
In March, OpenAI closed a funding round co-led by SoftBank that valued AI Lab at $852 billion. This is despite the company facing fierce competition from rivals such as: google And humanity.
OpenAI’s rising valuation has helped SoftBank’s Vision Fund, but OpenAI’s concentration in SoftBank’s portfolio has raised concerns about its debt burden. In March, S&P Global Ratings revised SoftBank’s outlook from “stable” to “negative.”
The rating agency said that SoftBank’s “additional large investment in OpenAI is likely to deteriorate asset liquidity, portfolio quality, and financial strength.”
The rating agency said SoftBank could “limit the negative financial impact” by selling some assets. In fact, Softbank and T-Mobile Nvidia To fund a bet on OpenAI.
The company announced a profit of 218.1 billion yen ($1.4 billion) from these sales and other investments during the fiscal year. However, after excluding factors such as exchange rates and expenses, SoftBank’s investment profit and loss excluding Vision Fund amounted to a loss of 472.1 billion yen.
Overall, SoftBank Group posted a net profit of 5 trillion yen for the year, mainly with support from the Vision Fund and its communications division.
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