SoftBank Group's profits exceeded expectations, boosted by holdings in Intel and ByteDance

SoftBank Group reported a decline in profits for the first fiscal quarter, partly due to reduced earnings from its technology fund business. However, overall profits still exceeded expectations due to a surge in the value of its holdings in Intel and TikTok's parent company ByteDance.

The Japanese technology investment company stated on Thursday that it recorded an investment gain of 1.333 trillion yen (approximately 8.45 billion USD) from its Intel shares, while also realizing a gain of 2.2 billion USD from its stake in ByteDance.

In August 2025, SoftBank agreed to invest 2 billion USD in Intel at a price of 23 USD per share. Intel's recent trading price is around 101 USD, boosting the value of SoftBank's holdings in the American chip manufacturer.

SoftBank's holdings in Intel are separate from its Vision Fund, which holds stakes in OpenAI and several other technology companies.

The Vision Fund's profits have significantly declined compared to the same period last year, impacted by valuation losses from investments such as the AI-driven robotic warehouse automation company Symbotic. The fund reported profits of 54.3 billion yen, down from 451.39 billion yen in the same period last year, which had been bolstered by returns from investments in e-commerce company Coupang.

SoftBank stated that the value of its stake in OpenAI (the developer of the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT) has remained unchanged since the end of March. The Tokyo-based company recorded 25 billion USD in investment gains for the quarter from January to March.

The company added that its Vision Fund 2 plans to borrow 10 billion USD this month using OpenAI shares as collateral.

Investors are closely monitoring SoftBank, with concerns about the company's intensive financing for AI capital expenditures, as well as worries about whether these efforts will generate significant profit engines in the future.

SoftBank's Chief Financial Officer Yoshimoto Goto stated at a briefing on Thursday that there is an overwhelming supply shortage in data centers, and the advancement of numerous projects is a positive development. "If we cannot ensure this computing power, the growth rate of the AI technology industry will slow down," he said.

The Japanese company has made several large-scale investments in OpenAI and plans to reinvest 10 billion USD in October. This will bring SoftBank's total investment in OpenAI to 64.6 billion USD, with a stake of approximately 13%.

In May of this year, SoftBank Group announced plans to build a 52 billion USD data center in France to take advantage of the country's surplus nuclear power and diversify its data center layout beyond the United States and Japan.

Last week, Arm Holdings, a subsidiary of SoftBank, reported an increase in net profits for the first fiscal quarter due to sustained demand for its chip designs in AI infrastructure and data centers.

For the three months ending in June, SoftBank's net profit decreased by 18% compared to the same period last year, totaling 347.33 billion yen. This performance still exceeded the expectations of 125.9 billion yen from data provider Visible Alpha's analyst survey