SoftBank swings to profit after Masayoshi Son's AI bets pay off

As part of its multi-pronged push into AI, SoftBank is slated to invest as much as $30 billion in OpenAI

- Bloomberg

SoftBank Group Corp. swung to a quarterly profit, riding on gains from its bets on Nvidia Corp. and startups in a boon for founder Masayoshi Son's bets on artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

A recovery at SoftBank's signature Vision Fund and the sale of assets such as its T-Mobile US Inc. holdings are helping Son double down on bets geared to help him capitalize on booming investment in AI hardware. SoftBank, which had sold $4.8 billion worth of its stake in the US telecom company in June, on Thursday revealed the sale of another $3 billion of the US carrier's stock.

The Tokyo-based company reported net income of ¥421.82 billion ($2.9 billion) in its fiscal first quarter, more than double the average of analyst estimates. The Vision Fund logged a ¥451.39 billion profit, helped by a recovery in tech valuations and gains on holdings such as Coupang Inc., Autol Group SE, Symbotic Inc. and Swiggy Ltd.

SoftBank's earnings got an additional boost from paper gains on its recent purchases of stock in Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. The Japanese company increased its stake in Nvidia to more than $3 billion as of end-March, helping the Japanese investor benefit from the AI accelerator maker's 46% rally during the three months through June.