SoftBank's $46B OpenAI Win: Annual Profit Quadruples to $31.6B

SoftBank booked a record annual net profit of 5 trillion yen ($31.6 billion) for the year ended March, four times the prior year's number. The driver: a $46 billion yearly gain at the Vision Fund, almost entirely from its OpenAI stake.

Net profit in the January-March quarter: 1.83 trillion yen ($11.6 billion), the sixth straight profitable quarter.

The Details

It is Masayoshi Son's biggest annual print in years. The Vision Fund alone gained 3.1 trillion yen on OpenAI in the final quarter.

Cumulative OpenAI gain to date: $45 billion on a $30 billion investment.

In March, OpenAI closed a funding round co-led by SoftBank that valued the AI lab at $852 billion. SoftBank has committed to push its total OpenAI exposure to $64.6 billion for a 13 percent stake, with another $30 billion scheduled across 2026.

To finance the bet, Son has been selling down everything else. T-Mobile shares sold over the year: $16.25 billion. Nvidia stake: trimmed. The group also booked 218.1 billion yen on smaller exits.

Outside OpenAI, the rest of the portfolio is bleeding. Excluding the Vision Fund, SoftBank posted an investment income loss of 472.1 billion yen on holdings including Coupang, DiDi Global and Klarna. There was a 278.6 billion yen gain on Intel, run by former SoftBank board member Lip-Bu Tan.

The bridge loan: $40 billion arranged in March, $20 billion drawn in April for the OpenAI capital call, $2.5 billion already repaid.

The bet inside the bet

S&P revised SoftBank's outlook from 'stable' to 'negative' in March, citing concentration risk. The rating agency told the group it could 'limit negative financial impacts' by selling more assets. Son's answer has been to sell more and buy more OpenAI.

The risk: peers like Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude keep grabbing share, while OpenAI's training and inference bill keeps rising. A flat OpenAI valuation for a single quarter would wipe out the entire 3.1 trillion yen Q4 gain.

The hedge: SoftBank is quietly building a robotics arm. The $5.4 billion ABB Robotics deal closed last year, and the group has created a dedicated subsidiary to hold robotics stakes. The Vision Fund is the AI software play. Robotics is the AI hardware play.

Sources: CNBC, Nikkei, DealStreet Asia, Business Times Singapore