SoftBank on Thursday reported fiscal first-quarter net profit of ¥347.3 billion ($2.2 billion), comfortably beating the ¥120.23 billion analysts had expected (LSEG estimates) — though still down nearly 18% year on year. The surprise engine was Intel: the Japanese conglomerate booked a ¥1.3 trillion ($8.2 billion) gain on its stake in the U.S. chipmaker, whose shares have surged nearly 400% over the past 12 months after SoftBank invested roughly $2 billion last year.
That windfall powered the company's non-Vision-Fund investment arm to ¥1.05 trillion in segment profit. The Vision Funds, which hold stakes from OpenAI to ByteDance, added a $1.7 billion gain in value, driven mainly by a $2.2 billion rise in its ByteDance stake that offset declines in companies such as PayPay.
The contrast with last quarter is stark: in the previous period the Vision Funds posted nearly $20 billion in gains, almost all from OpenAI. This quarter SoftBank recorded no gain or loss on OpenAI at all, even as it has committed more than $60 billion to the company (about $55 billion already invested) for roughly 13% ownership. The company says it saw no material change justifying a revaluation — a notable stance with OpenAI facing competition from Anthropic, Amazon and Chinese open-source players, and having confidentially filed for an IPO in June.
Not everything glittered. SoftBank's AI computing segment — housing Arm, Graphcore and Ampere — posted a ¥200.8 billion loss, wider than last year, on higher R&D costs. And investors remain wary: the stock is down around 34% from its June record high amid scrutiny of AI spending. CEO Masayoshi Son remains defiant, calling the AI revolution '50 times bigger than the dot-com boom.'
