SoftBank Group Corp. has been all over the news! It’s now co-leading a massive $40 billion funding round for OpenAI, the newish company behind ChatGPT. This is an incredibly smart strategic move for SoftBank. They’ve been even more anxious to see finalization of their proposed $6.5 billion takeover of AI chip maker Ampere Computing. The company last week announced a whopping $4 billion profit for the quarter ending June, its second profitable quarter in a row.
In these most recent financial results, SoftBank announced a record profit of 421.8 billion yen. That’s about $2.87 billion just for the quarter ending in June! This was a surprise figure to the market. Analysts from LSEG had only expected a profit of 127.6 billion yen. That’s a huge improvement over last year’s recovery. During that period, the company recorded an operating loss of 174.28 billion yen.
Following a recent, unexpected profit surge, this is the latest positive development for SoftBank. They announced their first annual profit in four years for the fiscal year ending last March. The company attributes its better performance to earnings from long-term investments. Major market movers including Alibaba, T-Mobile, and Deutsche Telekom fueled much of these increases. These investments have kept states financially afloat, although they’ve come under fire.
To be sure, SoftBank did experience investment losses from the sale of shares in both T-Mobile and Alibaba. But these losses were at least somewhat offset by gains they realized from their investment in semiconductor giant Nvidia. In addition, the company’s success was buoyed further by private investments in a slew of other tech companies based in India.
SoftBank is currently in talks to buy Ampere Computing. This decision further demonstrates their serious intentions to expand in the artificial intelligence industry. The potential successful closing of this acquisition could enhance SoftBank’s capabilities and position within the AI landscape that’s changing faster than the rest of technology.