Tokyo, Japan — SoftBank Group Corp. announced Tuesday that it has sold its entire stake in U.S. chipmaking giant Nvidia, raising US$5.8 billion to fund new artificial intelligence initiatives, including expanded investment in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. The move underscores SoftBank’s strategic pivot toward becoming a major global force in artificial intelligence development.
The sale was completed in October, coinciding with a surge in Nvidia’s market value, which recently surpassed US$5 trillion, cementing its place as one of the most valuable companies in the world. SoftBank’s decision to sell comes after the company reaped significant gains from Nvidia’s meteoric rise amid the ongoing AI boom.
SoftBank’s chairman and CEO, Masayoshi Son, has made clear that the group’s next chapter will focus on artificial intelligence and digital infrastructure. The company has already invested tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI, and the two firms are collaborating to deliver next-generation AI services in Japan.
Earlier this year, Son joined U.S. President Donald Trump, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, and Oracle founder Larry Ellison in announcing “Stargate,” a massive US$500 billion AI project designed to develop large-scale artificial intelligence systems and data centers.
SoftBank’s financial results reflected this renewed optimism. For the fiscal half-year ending in September, the company reported a profit of approximately 2.5 trillion yen (US$13 billion), nearly triple its profit from a year earlier. Revenue rose 7.7 per cent year-over-year to 3.7 trillion yen (US$24 billion), boosted by strong returns from its Vision Fund portfolio.
Selling the Nvidia shares also strengthens SoftBank’s balance sheet while maintaining ties to the broader AI ecosystem. Many of SoftBank’s portfolio companies, including Arm Holdings and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., continue to rely on Nvidia’s cutting-edge technology.
Despite exiting its Nvidia position, SoftBank and Nvidia remain closely linked through ongoing ventures and shared interests in AI infrastructure. Nvidia, for its part, recently announced plans for a US$100 billion investment in OpenAI, including the construction of 10 gigawatts of AI data centers to power ChatGPT and related platforms.
The announcement comes amid a frenzied rally in AI-related stocks that has fueled comparisons to the early 2000s dot-com boom. Critics warn that valuations may be rising too rapidly, but investors continue to pour money into companies leading the AI revolution.
SoftBank’s stock has nearly doubled in value over the past year, climbing another 2 per cent in Tokyo trading on Tuesday. Nvidia shares slipped 1.3 per cent in premarket trading after a 5.8 per cent gain on Monday.
SoftBank’s latest move signals a clear shift in Son’s vision: from investing broadly across technology to concentrating on what he calls “the AI revolution of the century.”