SoftBank Beats on Intel Gain as OpenAI Goes Flat
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- SoftBank posted fiscal Q1 net profit of 347.3 billion yen ($2.2 billion), beating analyst estimates of 120.23 billion yen, though the figure was down nearly 18% year-on-year.
- Intel delivered a 1.3 trillion yen unrealized gain for SoftBank's investment division, fueled by Intel's roughly 400% stock surge over the past 12 months.
- Vision Funds swung to a thin 5.4 billion yen profit from 451.4 billion yen a year earlier, with a $2.2 billion increase in the ByteDance stake offsetting declines in holdings like PayPay.
- OpenAI contributed no gain or loss in the quarter, a stark contrast to the prior period when the AI company drove nearly $20 billion of Vision Fund gains.
- SoftBank's AI computing segment — housing Arm, Graphcore, and Ampere — widened its loss to 200.8 billion yen from 32.4 billion yen a year ago, citing higher R&D costs.
- SoftBank's share price has fallen roughly 34% from its June record high as investors question how it will fund a portfolio heavily concentrated in Arm and OpenAI.
- Masayoshi Son defended SoftBank's roughly 20% net-asset exposure to OpenAI, calling the AI revolution "50 times bigger than the dot-com boom."
Why it matters: SoftBank has already deployed $55 billion of a $60 billion-plus commitment to OpenAI, yet this quarter the AI giant contributed nothing to earnings while the AI computing segment loss widened to 200.8 billion yen. With shares down ~34% from June's record high, investors are now pricing in real skepticism about how SoftBank funds its concentrated bets beyond headline-grabbing Intel windfalls.
