Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank said Tuesday it has sold its shares in U.S. chipmaker Nvidia for $5.8 billion, signaling a strategic shift toward investing more heavily in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.
SoftBank Group Corp., based in Tokyo, said the Nvidia stake was sold in October. The move comes as the company’s net profit nearly tripled in the first half of the current fiscal year compared with the same period a year earlier.
Between April and September, SoftBank’s profit surged to about 2.5 trillion yen (approximately $13 billion), while revenue rose 7.7% year-on-year to 3.7 trillion yen ($24 billion).
SoftBank’s earnings often fluctuate because of its wide-ranging investments through its Vision Funds, which have recently performed well.
In February, SoftBank Chairman Masayoshi Son joined U.S. President Donald Trump, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison to announce plans for a major artificial intelligence initiative called Stargate, which could see investments of up to $500 billion.
SoftBank has already poured tens of billions of dollars into OpenAI and is partnering with the U.S.-based firm to expand AI services in Japan.
The sale of its Nvidia shares marks Son’s strategic pivot toward artificial intelligence and also generated substantial gains for the company, benefiting from Nvidia’s meteoric rise in market value.
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Nvidia recently became the world’s first $5 trillion company—just three months after hitting the $4 trillion mark—and has pledged to invest $100 billion in OpenAI to build massive new AI data centers with at least 10 gigawatts of computing capacity.
While Nvidia and other AI-related firms have fueled this year’s stock market rally, some analysts warn that tech valuations may be overheating, drawing parallels to the early 2000s dot-com bubble.
Despite the divestment, SoftBank and Nvidia maintain close ties, as many SoftBank-backed ventures use Nvidia’s technology.
SoftBank also holds stakes in chipmakers Arm Holdings and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., both benefiting from the growing global demand for AI technologies.
SoftBank shares have nearly doubled in value over the past year, rising another 2% on Tuesday. Nvidia’s stock dipped 1.3% in premarket trading after gaining 5.8% on Monday.
Source: AP