Japan tech giant SoftBank Group sees better fortunes on surging AI stocks
TOKYO — Japanese technology conglomerate SoftBank Group Corp. posted a 421.8 billion yen (US$2.9 billion) profit in the April-June quarter, rebounding from a loss a year earlier as its investments benefited from the craze for artificial intelligence.
Quarterly sales at Tokyo-based SoftBank Group, which invests heavily in AI companies like Nvidia and Open AI, rose 7% to 1.8 trillion yen ($12 billion), the company said Thursday.
SoftBank's loss in April-June 2024 was 174 billion yen.
The company's fortunes tend to fluctuate because it invests in a range of ventures through its Vision Funds, a move that carries risks.
The group's founder Masayoshi Son has emphasized that he sees a vibrant future in AI.
SoftBank has also invested in Arm Holdings and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Both companies, which produce computer chips, have benefitted from the growth of AI.
'The era is definitely AI, and we are focused on AI,' SoftBank senior executive Yoshimitsu Goto told reporters. 'An investment company goes through its ups and downs, but we are recently seeing steady growth.'
Some of SoftBank's other investments also have paid off big. An example is Coupang, an e-commerce company known as the 'Amazon of South Korea,' because it started out in Seoul. Coupang now operates in the U.S. and other Asian nations.
Goto said preparations for an IPO for PayPay, a kind of cashless payment system, were going well.
The company has already held IPOs for Chime, a U.S. 'neobank' that provides banking services for low-credit consumers, and for Etoro, a personal investment platform.
SoftBank Group stock, which has risen from a year ago, finished 1.3% higher on the Tokyo Stock Exchange after its earnings results were announced.
___
Yuri Kageyama, The Associated Press
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CTV News
40 minutes ago
- CTV News
AI in health care: Hype and red flags to watch for
Some easy-to-understand advice for using A.I, tools safely and knowing when it's time to pick up the phone and call your doctor. With tens of millions of downloads, generative AI apps like ChatGPT are increasingly being used to seek out medical advice. A recent study by researchers at the University of Waterloo found that only a fraction of ChatGPT's responses to open-ended medical questions were considered correct or clear. Experts say large language models (LLMs) should be used with caution. Dr. Vera Kohut, national medical director at Serefin Health, spoke to CTV Morning Live on Thursday to discuss what's helpful, what's hype, and what red flags to look out for. 'It's here to stay and we've just got to understand that it needs to become more fulsome in its accuracy,' she said. Kohut says LLMs are designed to mimic conversations. 'When you understand that AI is really a machine that has been fed information by a human and it has learned from those human interactions, what happens is that it is not personal,' she said. 'It does not know anything about you, your personal history, your family history, your genetics. It doesn't know anything about the geography that you live in, your gender, your race, so as a result, it's giving you blanket information; it's not giving you personal information.' Generative AI tools have no capacity to assess risk or get into the nuances of your personal health situation, Kohut added. 'Therefore, it's likely to give you generalized information. It may be inaccurate,' she said. Red flags to watch for when using AI Kohut says if you should be skeptical whenever a chatbot gives you a diagnosis. 'If it suddenly gives you one diagnosis, or it starts giving you these vague diagnoses, or it says more research is needed, be careful,' she said. 'If it suddenly does not recognize, and it may not, the importance of what you are saying and therefore does not guide you, in a situation where your symptoms are increasing, to go and get further help, or frankly, doesn't talk about you doing that, beware. And if, in situations where you're talking to it and it suddenly starts giving you information about supplements or strange therapeutic interventions, beware.' The Ontario Medical Association recently raised concerns about a growing trend of self-diagnosis using online tools and said that while it's not always necessarily a problem, it can be risky and should be part of a broader conversation with a medical professional. Can AI be helpful? Kohut says there are ways AI tools can help. 'It allows you, for example, to track your symptoms. It allows you to take a look at what you're going through and ask AI what that might mean. It allows you to take medical information and make it more palatable,' she said. She said you can also use it to track medical appointments and medications. Kohut said, however, that it is important to consider privacy whenever you use AI tools. Earlier this year, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that there is no legal confidentiality when feeding personal information into ChatGPT. 'We need to be more aware of the need for privacy in the information that is being given,' she said.
Canada News.Net
17 hours ago
- Canada News.Net
Scam centers exposed as Meta purges millions of WhatsApp accounts
NEW YORK CITY, New York: Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, has announced that it removed 6.8 million WhatsApp accounts in the first half of the year due to their ties with international scam networks. These accounts were linked to organized criminal "scam centers" operating across borders, targeting people through online fraud. The mass takedown is part of Meta's broader effort to fight online scams, which have become more frequent and sophisticated. In a statement released this week, Meta said it is also introducing new tools on WhatsApp to help users identify and avoid scams. One such feature is a safety notice that appears when someone not in your contact list adds you to a group chat. Another ongoing test will prompt users to pause before replying to suspicious messages. According to Meta, criminal scam centers, often run through forced labor and organized crime, are among the most active sources of digital fraud. These scammers frequently switch platforms to avoid detection, sometimes beginning on dating apps or SMS and then moving to social media or payment platforms. Meta cited recent scam campaigns that used Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Telegram, and even ChatGPT to spread fraudulent schemes. These included fake offers to pay for social media engagement, pyramid schemes, and misleading cryptocurrency investment pitches. One such campaign, reportedly run from a scam center in Cambodia, was disrupted by Meta in collaboration with OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. The scammers had been using AI-generated messages to trick users and expand their operations across platforms. With scams growing more elaborate, Meta is urging users to remain cautious and use the new security tools being rolled out across its services.
Globe and Mail
19 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Meta Just Gave Nvidia Investors Great News
Key Points Nvidia's top-tier clients are investing huge amounts of money in AI development, and they're partnering with Nvidia. Several large tech stocks reported strong earnings last week. Nvidia reports at the end of the month and it tends to beat guidance. 10 stocks we like better than Nvidia › Last week was a busy one for tech followers. Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META), Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT), Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), and Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) all reported second-quarter earnings, and while they were mostly positive in different ways, artificial intelligence (AI) continued to be a strong trend. That's great news for Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) investors. Let's see what's happening and why investors should get excited about what Nvidia will have to say when it reports quarterly earnings later this month. Winning with AI AI has become an enormous growth driver for tech companies, and really all kinds of companies. It unlocks productivity and aids in creativity in ways that make it essential if a company doesn't want to be left behind. Where to invest $1,000 right now? Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks to buy right now. Learn More » Amazon said that its AI business through the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud division continues to grow at triple digits year over year, "with more demand than we have supplied for at the moment." It's launching all sorts of new features as demand grows and changes, and releasing powerful new tools aimed at developers creating large language models and in need of the highest-power AI chips. It also boasted that it rolled out new EC2 instances, a type of virtual server on the AWS cloud supported by new Nvidia Blackwell "super chips," the most powerful graphics processing units (GPUs) on AWS. Amazon spent $31.4 billion on capital expenditures, which it says is a reasonable estimate for the back half of the year. Although that could be in many parts of the business, it said the AI business is where most of it is going. That means it could be spending even more than the original $100 billion it said it would spend in 2025. Microsoft boasted that its Azure cloud business is grabbing market share, up 34% year over year in the 2024 fiscal fourth quarter (ended June 30), and that it now has 400 data centers, the most of any other cloud business. Management highlighted that while there's industry talk about the first gigawatt or multi-gigawatt data centers, it launched two gigawatts of power in its data centers over the past 12 months, and it's scaling faster than the competition. At Meta, CEO Mark Zuckerberg discussed many exciting developments in AI, including the launch of Meta Superintelligence Labs, which combines all of the company's AI efforts, and progress on upgrades to its Llama LLMs. In April, Nvidia announced its own involvement in the new Llama developments. Zuckerberg said Meta is working on the next generation of products "that will push the frontier in the next year or so." Meta has made headlines over the last few weeks as it crafts a team of AI specialists it's been pulling from rival companies. Apple continues to disappoint, or at least confuse, investors with its AI developments. It's taking its time to develop an AI infrastructure that rivals the competition, and it's questionable whether or not it's losing ground or if it's going to eventually release something different and special, which is its signature. Management said it's making substantial investments in AI and that its capital expenditures are going to increase. Although investors seemed disappointed in Apple's AI updates, there's no question that it provided an excellent report, beating expectations on the top and bottom lines, and it's likely to report progress in Apple Intelligence over the coming quarters. Driving AI The common denominator here is Nvidia, which partners with all of these companies. It provides the power for Amazon's and Microsoft's clientele to develop potent LLMs and AI agents, and they also use Nvidia GPUs for the data centers that drive their own LLMs. Meta uses Nvidia's GPUs for its own LLMs and AI agents, and Apple partners with Nvidia for its AI business as well. Nvidia is guiding for sales to increase about 50% over last year in the fiscal second quarter, which it will report on Aug. 27. Its quarterly results usually beat guidance, but with the success and continued capital investments of its top-tier clients, it's very likely that it will beat sales guidance and give shareholders a strong outlook. Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now? Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $653,427!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,119,863!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,060% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 182% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of August 4, 2025 Jennifer Saibil has positions in Apple. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
