Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief govt officer of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks on the SoftBank World occasion in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, July 16, 2025. Talking through teleconference, Son and OpenAI chief Sam Altman argued that advancing synthetic intelligence would result in new jobs that aren’t but imagined, and the development of robotics will assist kickstart a “self-improvement” loop. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg through Getty Pictures
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Shares of SoftBank Group plunged as a lot as 10% Wednesday after the Japanese large stated it had bought its whole stake in U.S. chip large Nvidia for $5.83 billion. The capital shall be used to fund SoftBank’s $22.5 billion funding in ChatGPT dad or mum OpenAI, an individual aware of the matter informed CNBC.
Shares of SoftBank Group final traded greater than 6% decrease.
In its earnings report, SoftBank stated it bought 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October. It additionally trimmed its T-Cell place, elevating $9.17 billion.
“We wish to present quite a lot of funding alternatives for buyers, whereas we will nonetheless keep monetary power,” stated SoftBank’s chief monetary officer, Yoshimitsu Goto, throughout an investor presentation.
Whereas the choice to unload Nvidia shares could have caught some buyers off guard, it is not SoftBank’s first exit from the U.S. chip heavyweight.
The corporate’s Imaginative and prescient Fund was an early Nvidia supporter, reportedly constructing a $4 billion stake in 2017 earlier than absolutely divesting in January 2019. Regardless of the most recent sale, SoftBank stays carefully tied to Nvidia by way of its broader enterprise pursuits.
“This can be a bullish sign on the theme from SoftBank doubling down and never a bearish check in our view,” stated Dan Ives, international head of expertise analysis at Wedbush Securities.
Whereas OpenAI is central to SoftBank’s GenAI portfolio, {hardware} stays a precedence as effectively, largely by way of its stake in British chip designer Arm, with which SoftBank is co-developing merchandise, stated Rolf Bulk, fairness analysis analyst at New Road Analysis. SoftBank has a controlling stake in U.Ok-based Arm Holdings, whose chip designs energy cellular and AI processors.
A number of different tech shares within the area additionally declined. Semiconductor testing tools maker Advantest and Tokyo Electron, a chip manufacturing tools maker, slipped over 2%.
Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, fell 0.34%. South Korean reminiscence chip large SK Hynix was 1.62% decrease.
—CNBC’s Dylan Butts and April Roach contributed to this report.
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