SoftBank Group reported a $11.6 billion net profit for Q1 2025, driven by a $20 billion gain from its OpenAI investment. The Vision Fund unit alone booked a $19.6 billion gain in the quarter, marking the firm's fifth straight quarterly profit.
CEO Masayoshi Son, a key OpenAI backer, has seen cumulative gains of $45 billion. However, the scale of this bet-SoftBank's largest since its 2017 and 2019 Vision Fund launches-has sparked concerns about financing pressures.
Critics note that OpenAI faces rising competition from Alphabet's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude, while AI model training costs continue to climb. To fund its strategy, SoftBank sold $16.25 billion in T-Mobile shares this fiscal year and has also reduced positions in Nvidia and Arm.