SoftBank returns to health with a bump from AI

Global tech investor SoftBank is finally getting something out of AI. SoftBank shares surged 11% Thursday in their biggest daily jump in nearly two years, thanks to a jump in sales at its subsidiary Arm, a giant chipdesign company that has benefited from enthusiasm about artificial intelligence.

- Megumi Fujikawa

SoftBank also reported its first quarterly profit in more than a year after Tokyo markets closed.

It earned 950 billion yen, equivalent to $6.4 billion, in the last three months of 2023, thanks in part to a slight rebound in its startup investments.

SoftBank's founder and chief executive officer, billionaire Masayoshi Son, has been evangelizing the promise of AI for more than a decade-but his record thus far has largely been characterized by flops and misses on a giant scale. He said the company's Vision Funds, which have spent over $140 billion, were devoted to ventures focusing on AI, a technology he has said will reshape humanity.

But the money went mostly to companies with tenuous or unclear links to AI, such as WeWork and now-defunct lender Greensill Capital, causing painful losses for SoftBank.

Meanwhile, Son mostly missed out on companies in the booming field of generative AI, such as OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT. Arm is starting to make up for some of those losses.