Nvidia Shares Fall 2% as SoftBank Sells Entire $5.8 Billion Stake
Nvidia shares fell more than 2% in early U.S. trading after SoftBank, Japan’s tech investment conglomerate, announced it had sold its entire stake in the AI chip leader for $5.83 billion.
In its latest earnings report, SoftBank said it had offloaded 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October, along with part of its holdings in telecom giant T-Mobile. CFO Yoshimitsu Goto told investors that the sales were part of a broader effort to boost “asset monetization,” according to comments cited by CNBC.
SoftBank Shifts Focus to OpenAI
The move comes as SoftBank seeks to strengthen its position in OpenAI, the developer behind ChatGPT and one of the most prominent names driving the global AI boom. Earlier this year, SoftBank agreed to lead a $40 billion funding round for OpenAI at a $300 billion valuation, and last month it joined a consortium purchasing $6.6 billion in OpenAI shares from employees — at a raised $500 billion valuation.
Despite the enthusiasm surrounding artificial intelligence, investor caution is rising over the massive capital expenditures involved in scaling AI infrastructure. Many analysts are questioning how soon companies like OpenAI will begin generating sustainable profits from such aggressive expansion.
Vision Fund Fuels Record Profits
According to Reuters, Goto told analysts that SoftBank views “the risk of not investing as greater than the risk of investing.” The company’s Vision Fund — its flagship investment arm — reported significant gains, helping drive second-quarter net profit to 2.5 trillion yen ($16.3 billion), more than double the figure from the same period last year and well above Bloomberg’s estimate of 418 billion yen.
Even after exiting its direct stake in Nvidia, SoftBank remains linked to the AI chipmaker through other ventures, including its participation in the $500 billion Stargate project, aimed at expanding U.S. data center infrastructure, CNBC reported.
