SoftBank Group reported a net profit of ¥1.83 trillion ($11.6 billion) for the January-March quarter, more than tripling year-over-year. The surge was fueled by gains from its investment in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
This marks the fifth consecutive quarterly profit for the Japanese tech conglomerate. The Vision Fund recorded a ¥3.1 trillion gain from its OpenAI stake in the quarter alone. Cumulative gains on the investment now total $45 billion.
Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son remains one of OpenAI's most vocal backers. However, critics point out that OpenAI faces increasing competition from Alphabet's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude. The cost to train and run AI models is also rising.
To fund its ambitions-the most aggressive since the Vision Fund launches in 2017 and 2019-SoftBank has sold stakes in T-Mobile and Nvidia, issued bonds, and taken loans backed by its holdings in Arm and SoftBank Corp.
In March, SoftBank arranged a $40 billion bridge loan. It drew down $20 billion in April, primarily for the OpenAI investment, and has already repaid $2.5 billion. SoftBank has committed an additional $30 billion to OpenAI through 2026, bringing its total potential stake to $64.6 billion for 13%.
The group also booked a ¥278.6 billion gain on its investment in Intel, now led by former SoftBank director Lip-Bu Tan.
Beyond AI, SoftBank is building a robotics portfolio. It acquired ABB's robotics business for $5.4 billion last year and created a new subsidiary to hold these stakes, betting on long-term growth in the sector.