SoftBank Group swings to profit in first quarter on market enthusiasm for tech stocks
The result will likely be welcomed by investors as SoftBank pursues its biggest spending spree since the launch of its Vision Funds in 2017 and 2019, this time making mammoth investments in artificial intelligence companies.
Investors and analysts are awaiting updates on how these investments will be financed, the timeline for returns to materialise and whether assets will be sold to fund the new projects.
Favourable market conditions for technology companies over the quarter raised valuations of SoftBank's array of startup stakes, potentially fuelling monetisation opportunities that can be directed toward newer investments.
SoftBank's Vision Funds hold US$45 billion worth of late-stage companies ready to list soon, up from US$36 billion at the end of March.
The group overall logged a net profit of 421.8 billion yen (S$3.68 billion) for the April-June quarter.
BT in your inbox
Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox.
Sign Up
Sign Up
The result compared with a net loss of 174.3 billion yen for the same period a year earlier and the 127.6 billion yen average profit from three analyst estimates compiled by LSEG.
The Vision Fund unit posted an investment gain of 726.8 billion yen, around half of which derived from a surge in the share price of South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang over the quarter.
AI investment spree
SoftBank is leading a US$40 billion funding round for ChatGPT maker OpenAI. SoftBank has until the end of the year to fund its US$22.5 billion portion, although the remainder has been subscribed, according to a source familiar with the matter.
It is also leading the financing for the Stargate project – a US$500 billion scheme to develop data centres in the United States, part of its effort to position itself as the 'organiser of the industry,' founder Masayoshi Son said in June.
SoftBank has yet to release details on what kinds of returns its financing of the Stargate project could generate. The extent of third-party investment will determine what other financing tools, such as bank loans and debt issuance, it may have to deploy.
In July, SoftBank raised US$4.8 billion by selling off a portion of its holding in T-Mobile.
However, SoftBank's performance in exiting from investments and distributing profit has been patchy of late. The Vision Funds have made a cumulative investment gain of just US$5 billion out of a total committed capital of US$172.2 billion as of the end of June. REUTERS
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Straits Times
2 hours ago
- Straits Times
The best AI tutor for O-level subjects: ChatGPT, Gemini or The Wise Otter?
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox The Straits Times pitted three chatbots against one another to check which AI tutor is the best for Singapore students. SINGAPORE - Students are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence (AI) tutors for their daily work. Besides mainstream tools such as Google's Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT, the latest contender in this space is The Wise Otter. Created and launched in April by Singaporean developer Jotham Goh, 33, The Wise Otter incorporates grading criteria used in Singapore schools. It can tackle primary school maths, as well as secondary school and junior college maths, English, physics, chemistry and biology questions with step-by-step explanations. The Straits Times pitted the three chatbots against one another to check which AI tutor is the best for Singapore students. For ChatGPT, ST included both GPT-4o and the latest GPT-5 models in this test. GPT-5, launched on Aug 8, is said to hallucinate less and deliver more accurate answers compared with earlier editions. Top stories Swipe. Select. Stay informed. Singapore 4 men arrested after police search operation in forested area near Rail Corridor Singapore SAF regular serviceman dies after being found unconscious at Hendon Camp swimming pool: Mindef Singapore E-bike rider arrested for rash act causing hurt after accident with pedestrian in Toa Payoh Singapore Man arrested for allegedly stealing from business class passenger on flight to Singapore Asia Manila struggles to keep a lasting hawker culture, casts eyes on how Asian nations lifted street food Singapore Driver taken to hospital after car hits lamp post in Orchard Road Singapore Urban farming, robots, AI exhibitions: Public invited to share ideas for new Science Centre Asia 2 Malaysian tourists critically injured after being set on fire in Bangkok The chatbots were asked to solve a random sample of questions found in past-year O-level papers and school examinations, including those that involve diagrams, across four subjects: maths, chemistry, physics and English. Math PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM FREE TEST PAPERS The three bots answered correctly a probability question about a cumulative frequency diagram showing the time that adults spent on exercise in one week. The bots also provided detailed explanations for their answers. Asked to find the value of k (the minimum hours of weekly exercise for adults to stay fit), given that only 60 per cent of the adults in the diagram meet this minimum recommendation, GPT-4o and The Wise Otter failed to provide the right answer. Only Gemini provided the correct value of k, which was 3. GPT-4o and The Wise Otter wavered when told that 3 was the correct answer, quickly analysed the question again and gave 3 as their answers. To test their confidence, both bots were told again that 3 was wrong. GPT-4o was more eager to please and wavered again, stating that k's value was 2.67. When the question was fed to GPT-5, it was able to provide the correct workings, but still misread the graph and gave the answer as 3.2. PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM FREE TEST PAPERS Although ChatGPT and The Wise Otter struggled with understanding the graph, all three bots were able to correctly answer other text-based questions. English The three bots were prompted to write an essay plan for the following question: ''I realised that I was much stronger than I had previously thought.' Write about a time when you felt like this.' All three bots were able to produce a comprehensive structure for students to follow, and suggested key points to include in each paragraph. They all prompted the writer to think of moments in life when there was a seemingly insurmountable challenge and how the writer's perspective changed after the event, as well as to use vivid language as much as possible. The Wise Otter went on to remind the writer that strength could be physical, emotional, mental or a combination of these. It also gave possible classifications of the essay as 'narrative', 'reflective' or 'personal recount'. These are three of several essay types that O-level students in local schools are taught to identify, along with the appropriate approaches for the essay types. The Wise Otter also provided advice on how to get the highest band for content, a scoring system used in GCE O levels – specifically, the essay needs to recount explicitly how the writer felt weak before, what happened to make the writer feel stronger, and how the writer realised he or she had strength all along. GCE O-level examiners typically award marks for content and language, and score the papers between bands zero and five (five for the highest marks). Essay-writing tips provided by The Wise Otter chatbot on Telegram. PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM THE WISE OTTER Chemistry PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM FREE TEST PAPERS A diagrammatic question on paper chromatography required the bots to identify which metals – lead, copper, iron, nickel and tin – could be found in mixture A, which contained three metals. The correct answer was lead, iron and tin, as the chromatogram of mixture A showed spots at the same heights as these metals. The bots were able to reason that matching the heights of the spots was the way to find the answer, but they were all able to correctly identify only two metals each. Gemini, GPT-4o and GPT-5 mistakenly identified copper as a metal in mixture A. The Wise Otter erroneously said that nickel was found in mixture A. Physics PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM SG TEST PAPERS When given a text-based multiple choice question that tested understanding of inertia, the bots gave an accurate definition of the concept, describing it as an object's resistance to changing its state of motion. The bots explained that inertia depends only on the mass of an object, and that other factors such as speed and velocity are irrelevant. They provided the correct answer that the car had the greatest inertia as it had the greatest mass. PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM SG TEST PAPERS Fed another physics question asking for the total resistance that flowed through an electrical circuit based on a diagram, the bots provided the correct answer, despite having struggled with diagrammatic maths and chemistry questions. All the bots were able to break down the calculations into two parts – first by calculating the resistance of the parallel resistors, and then by adding it to the resistance of the fixed resistor connected in series. They provided the correct formula for calculating the equivalent resistance of the parallel resistors. However, The Wise Otter's Telegram interface does not allow it to show fractions. Fractions are denoted by the symbol '/' instead. PHOTO: SCREENSHOT FROM THE WISE OTTER
Straits Times
8 hours ago
- Straits Times
Traders flee stocks feared to be under threat from AI
The souring sentiment among investors comes as AI is changing everything from the way people get information from the internet to how colleges function. NEW YORK – Artificial intelligence's imprint on US financial markets is unmistakable. Nvidia is the most valuable company in the world at nearly US$4.5 trillion. Startups from OpenAI to Anthropic have raised tens of billions of dollars. But there's a downside to the new technology that investors are increasingly taking note of: It threatens to upend industries much like the internet did before it. And investors have started placing bets on just where that disruption will occur next, ditching shares in companies some strategists expect will see falloffs in demand as AI applications become more widely adopted. Among them are web-development firms like digital-image company Shutterstock and software maker Adobe. The trio are part of a basket of 26 companies Bank of America strategists identified as most at risk from AI. The group has underperformed the S&P 500 Index by about 22 percentage points since mid-May after more or less keeping pace with the market since ChatGPT's debut in late 2022. 'The disruption is real,' said Mr Daniel Newman, chief executive officer of the Futurum Group. 'We thought it would happen over five years. It seems like it is going to happen over two. Service-based businesses with a high headcount, those are going to be really vulnerable, even if they have robust businesses from the last era of tech.' So far, few companies have failed as a result of the proliferation of chatbots and so-called agents that can write software code, answer complex questions and produce photos and videos. But with tech giants like Microsoft and Meta Platforms pouring hundreds of billions into AI, investors have started to get more defensive. The souring sentiment among investors comes as AI is changing everything from the way people get information from the internet to how colleges function. Even companies at the vanguard of the technology's development like Microsoft have been slashing jobs as productivity improves and to make way for more AI investments. To many tech-industry watchers, the time is nearing when AI becomes so pervasive that companies start going out of business. Anxiety about AI's impact on existing companies was on display last week when Gartner shares were routed after the market-research company cut its revenue forecast for the year. The stock fell 30 per cent in the five days, its biggest one-week drop on record. While the company blamed US government policies including spending cuts and tariffs, analysts were quick to point the finger at AI, which investors fear could provide cheaper alternatives to Gartner's research and analysis even though the company is deploying its own AI-powered tools. Historical precedents abound for new technology wiping out industries. The telegraph gave way to telephones, horsewhips and buggies were toppled by the automobile, and Blockbuster's eradication by Netflix exemplified the internet's disruption. 'There are a lot of pockets of the market that could be basically annihilated by AI, or at least the industry will see extreme disruption, and companies will be rendered irrelevant,' said Mr Adam Sarhan, chief executive officer at 50 Park Investments. 'Any company where you're paying someone to do something that AI can do faster and cheaper will be wiped out. Think graphic design, administrative work, data-analysis.' Of course, plenty of companies that were expected to be hammered by AI are thriving. Even though many AI companies offer instant translation services, Duolingo, the owner of a language-learning app, soared after raising its outlook for 2025 sales, in part because of how it has implemented AI into its own strategy. The stock has roughly doubled over the past year – but concerns linger that the next generation of AI will be a threat. The defensive moves from investors come as AI has re-emerged as the dominant theme between winners and losers in the stock market this year. It's been a stark reversal from earlier in 2025 when AI models developed on the cheap in China called into question US dominance in the field and raised concerns that spending on computing gear was set to slow. Instead, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet and have doubled down on spending. The four companies are expected to pour roughly US$350 billion into combined capital expenditures in their current fiscal years, up nearly 50 per cent from the previous year, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Much of that is funding the build out of AI infrastructure, which is benefiting companies like Nvidia, whose chips dominate the market for AI computing. Figuring out which companies are vulnerable to the technology takes a bit more nuance. Alphabet is widely seen as one of the best-positioned companies, with cutting edge features and top-tier talent and data. However, it is a component of Bank of America's AI risk basket, and the sense that it is playing defense – protecting its huge share of the lucrative internet search market – has long dogged the stock. For other companies, the risk seems more clear. Advertising agency Omnicom Group has dropped 15 per cent this year, as it faces a future where Meta is reportedly looking to fully automate ad creation through AI. Peer WPP is down more than 50 per cent. With so many companies facing AI risks, it's an investment theme that is poised to intensify, according to Mr Phil Fersht, chief executive officer of HFS Research. 'Wall Street clearly has the jitters,' Mr Fersht said. 'This is going to be a tough, unforgiving market.' -BLOOMBERG
CNA
17 hours ago
- CNA
US licenses Nvidia to export chips to China, official says
The commerce department has started issuing licenses to Nvidia to export its H20 chips to China, a US official told Reuters on Friday (Aug 8), removing a significant hurdle to the AI bellwether's access to a key market. The US last month reversed an April ban on the sale of the H20 chip to China. The company had tailored the microprocessor specially to the Chinese market to comply with the Biden-era AI chip export controls. The curbs will slice US$8 billion off sales from its July quarter, the chipmaker has warned. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met with Trump on Wednesday, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. A spokesperson for Nvidia declined comment. A White House spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The company said in July it was filing applications with the US government to resume sales to China of the H20 graphics processing unit, and had been assured it would get the licenses soon. It is unclear how many licenses may have been issued, which companies Nvidia is allowed to ship the H20s to, and the value of the shipments allowed. Nvidia disclosed in April that it expected a US$5.5 billion charge related to the restrictions. In May, Nvidia said the actual first-quarter charge due to the H20 restrictions was US$1 billion less than expected because it was able to reuse some materials. The Financial Times first reported Friday's developments. Nvidia said last month that its products have no "backdoors" that would allow remote access or control after China raised concerns over potential security risks in the H20 chip. BIG MARKET Exports of Nvidia's other advanced AI chips, barring the H20, to China are still restricted. Successive US administrations have curbed exports of advanced chips to China, looking to stymie Beijing's AI and defense development. While this has impacted US firms' ability to fully address booming demand from China, one of the world's largest semiconductor markets, it still remains an important revenue driver for American chipmakers. Huang has said the company's leadership position could slip without sales to China, where developers were being courted by Huawei Technologies with chips produced in China.
