Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief government 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 total stake in U.S. chip large Nvidia for $5.83 billion. The capital might be used to fund SoftBank’s $22.5 billion funding in ChatGPT dad or mum OpenAI, an individual accustomed to the matter advised 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 need to present quite a lot of funding alternatives for traders, whereas we will nonetheless preserve monetary energy,” stated SoftBank’s chief monetary officer, Yoshimitsu Goto, throughout an investor presentation.
Whereas the choice to unload Nvidia shares could have caught some traders 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 totally divesting in January 2019. Regardless of the newest sale, SoftBank stays intently tied to Nvidia via 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 know-how analysis at Wedbush Securities.
Whereas OpenAI is central to SoftBank’s GenAI portfolio, {hardware} stays a precedence as nicely, largely via 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 cell and AI processors.
A number of different tech shares within the area additionally declined. Semiconductor testing gear maker Advantest and Tokyo Electron, a chip manufacturing gear 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.
