SoftBank Posts $2.2 Billion Quarterly Profit on $8.2 Billion Intel Gain as OpenAI Contribution Sits at Zero

SoftBank reported fiscal first-quarter net profit of 347.3 billion Japanese yen ($2.2 billion), beating analyst expectations of 120.23 billion yen, according to LSEG estimates — driven largely by an outsized gain on the Japanese conglomerate's stake in U.S. chipmaker Intel.

The company recorded a 1.3 trillion yen gain on its Intel shares, which it had acquired through a roughly $2 billion investment announced last year. Intel's shares have surged nearly 400% over the last 12 months, lifting SoftBank's investment division to a segment profit of 1.05 trillion yen.

Despite the headline beat, net profit fell nearly 18% year-on-year, underscoring the uneven nature of a portfolio still heavily concentrated in a handful of high-volatility bets.

SoftBank's Vision Fund division, which holds positions spanning OpenAI to TikTok parent ByteDance, posted a gain of $1.7 billion in value during the quarter. That increase was primarily driven by a $2.2 billion rise in the assessed value of the company's ByteDance stake, which offset declines at companies including PayPay.

The Vision Funds segment posted a profit of just 5.4 billion yen, compared with 451.4 billion yen in the same period a year earlier — a steep drop that reflects how much of last year's result depended on a single source.

That source was OpenAI. In the prior quarter, Vision Funds posted a nearly $20 billion gain, nearly all driven by the AI company. This quarter, SoftBank recorded no investment gain or loss related to OpenAI at all, a notable absence given that the company has committed more than $60 billion to OpenAI and says $55 billion of that has already been deployed — an arrangement that would give SoftBank approximately 13% ownership.

SoftBank's AI computing segment — which houses chip companies including Arm, Graphcore, and Ampere — posted a 200.8 billion yen loss, wider than the 32.4 billion yen loss in the same quarter last year. The company attributed the deterioration to higher research and development costs across those holdings.

The earnings arrive as investors are scrutinizing AI infrastructure spending across the tech sector and pressing for clearer returns. SoftBank's share price has fallen around 34% from its record high in June, reflecting concern over the conglomerate's ability to fund its expanding bets and the concentrated exposure to Arm and OpenAI within its portfolio.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son told CNBC in June that he does not believe the company is overexposed to OpenAI, which accounts for roughly 20% of SoftBank's net asset value. Son described the AI revolution as being 50 times larger than the dot-com boom. "This is the biggest revolution of technology and realization that mankind ever experienced, so this is just like the beginning of the internet," Son said.

With Intel delivering the quarter's decisive windfall and OpenAI contributing nothing to the ledger this time around, the composition of SoftBank's gains signals how dependent near-term results remain on the timing of mark-to-market movements in a small number of positions — a dynamic investors will be watching closely as the company continues to deploy capital across AI infrastructure.

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