SoftBank earnings today showed that the firm swung back into profit in its fiscal third quarter, largely driven by founder Masayoshi Son’s large and growing investment in OpenAI. For some context, SoftBank made a staggering $41 billion investment in OpenAI last year. And that now sees the firm hold approximately 11% stake in OpenAI.
It’s been the market rhetoric for a while now that SoftBank is basically a proxy trade for OpenAI and that is clearly showing up in their earnings and valuations. And not to mention, their share price growth too. The firm is basically doubling down on this, with what looks to be very much an “all in” play.
To keep funding their bets on OpenAI, SoftBank notably sold its entire $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia by late 2025. It also sold off a significant portion of its T-Mobile stake for roughly $12.7 billion.
So, that speaks to their conviction and how much SoftBank is risking in putting all their chips on OpenAI.
Anyway, the headline above comes after their earnings report and relates to reports of SoftBank being in talks for another $30 billion investment into OpenAI. It looks like SoftBank is trying to play coy here but from what we know about Masayoshi Son, it feels like the bets on OpenAI will just keep increasing at this point.
If the $30 billion investment goes through, SoftBank will start to rival Microsoft in its exposure in OpenAI – which is roughly a 27% stake at this point.
