Billionaire Masayoshi Son’s megasize bet on OpenAI is powering profit at SoftBank Group.
The Tokyo-based global tech investor recorded a gain of $25 billion on its stake in the ChatGPT maker in the first three months of the year, SoftBank said in its earnings report Wednesday.
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It was such a large gain that it more than papered over losses in other parts of SoftBank’s portfolio, with the company posting an overall profit of $11.6 billion for the quarter, more than triple its profit in the first quarter of 2025.
Over the course of the prior 12 months, SoftBank’s stake in OpenAI increased in value by $44 billion, as the Sam Altman-led AI company raised money several times from SoftBank and others at increasing valuations, hitting $852 billion in March.
The gains on OpenAI have been wind in the sails for Son, SoftBank’s CEO, helping power the company’s shares up 216% in the past year. In all, SoftBank has committed to invest over $64 billion into the ChatGPT maker, more than any other investor, tying much of SoftBank’s fate to the artificial-intelligence company’s future.
The gains on OpenAI are for now only on paper. The San Francisco company plans an initial public offering as soon as this year. SoftBank stands to reap substantial cash profit if the IPO is a success—but also faces large losses if OpenAI stumbles in the face of stiff competition from the likes of leading AI players such as Anthropic and Alphabet.
For much of the past decade, SoftBank sprayed its money more broadly around the startup sector, an approach that led to high-profile black eyes when bets on companies such as WeWork or Chinese ride-hailing company DiDi soured.
SoftBank’s leader, Son, has reoriented the company in the past few years squarely around the frenzy in AI.
In addition to OpenAI, by far SoftBank’s largest bet, SoftBank plans to build its own data centers. It is also the lead developer on a $33 billion Ohio-based gas power plant financed by the Japanese-U.S. trade deal meant to power data centers. It has invested heavily in AI-oriented chips, and its chip-design company Arm recently announced an ambitious plan to sell new chips aimed at data centers.
To help pay for the litany of investments, SoftBank has raised over $20 billion by selling stakes in Nvidia and T-Mobile.
But mostly it has been borrowing. SoftBank reported $113 billion in debt as of March 31, up from $77 billion a year earlier. That number will go even higher. In April, SoftBank borrowed $20 billion to pay for its latest investment in OpenAI and plans to borrow another $20 billion later in the year.
Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said Wednesday that the company may take out debt tied to its 13% stake in OpenAI.
Goto said SoftBank has also created a new physical AI unit that mixes together its investments in robotics—including a planned $5.4 billion acquisition of ABB’s robotics unit—and its stakes in numerous startups. The Wall Street Journal reported last month that SoftBank was planning to take public a robotics unit it called Roze AI.
The quarter marked the end of the fiscal year for SoftBank, giving it an overall profit for the 12 months of 5 trillion yen, or $31.7 billion, in what SoftBank said was the largest annual profit by any company in Japanese history, besting a record set by SoftBank in 2020.
The gains at OpenAI have helped erase years of losses at its Vision Fund unit, which was by far the largest investor in startups in the 2010s. The company’s Vision Fund 2, which doused the startup sector with funding just before interest rates rose and valuations plunged in 2022, is once again profitable after nearly four years of running in the red.
Beneath the OpenAI-driven gains, the company absorbed losses related to the decline in share prices at portfolio companies Coupang and DiDi, as well as heavy spending in its AI chips unit that includes Ampere, a startup SoftBank acquired in 2025.
Write to Eliot Brown at Eliot.Brown@wsj.com and Kosaku Narioka at kosaku.narioka@wsj.com
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