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SoftBank Group reported a 248.6 billion yen ($1.62 billion)
profit for the October-December period, a reversal from 369
billion yen in losses racked up in the same quarter a year
earlier.
Quarterly sales rose 8% to 1.98 trillion yen ($12.9 billion).
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group sold its stake in Nvidia for $5.8
billion in October, in line with its focus on artificial
intelligence.
It has invested nearly $35 billion in OpenAI, the developer of
the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT, for an ownership
interest of about 11%, which has brought investments gains, the
company said.
Among other investments, last year SoftBank Group acquired
Ampere, a U.S.-based semiconductor design company, for $6.5
billion, after which it became a wholly owned U.S. subsidiary.
Another interest is robotics. SoftBank Group reached an
agreement with ABB last year to acquire its robotics business
for $5.375 billion. The deal still needs regulatory approval,
including in Europe, China and the U.S.
For the nine months through December, SoftBank Group posted a
3.17 trillion yen ($20.7 billion) profit, about five times what
it recorded in the previous year. Nine-month sales edged up
nearly 8% to 5.7 trillion yen ($37 billion).
SoftBank generally does not release annual profit forecasts.
“Our investments are beginning to pay off,” SoftBank Group's
chief financial officer, Yoshimitsu Goto, told reporters.
He stressed the gains were coming not just from OpenAI but from
a variety of investments, including in Arm, an AI semiconductor
company.
SoftBank’s financial performance tends to be erratic because it
is an aggressive investor in innovative, often fledgling,
technology.
Although its banking on OpenAI appears to have paid off so far,
some analysts caution that counting too much on OpenAI could be
risky.
SoftBank Group shares rose 2.4% on Thursday.
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