Catenaa, Wednesday, May 13, 2026- Technology investor SoftBank Group’s net profits tripled to $11.6 billion in the first quarter as it booked gains on the value of its investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.
It was SoftBank’s fifth consecutive quarterly profit, with the Vision Fund investing arm booking an OpenAI-driven gain of $ 19.5 billion in the quarter.
Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said SoftBank’s annual profit of 5 trillion yen was the highest ever by a Japanese company.
Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son is one of OpenAI’s most enthusiastic backers, with the group saying its cumulative gains on the investment total $45 billion.
But the scale of the OpenAI wager – SoftBank’s most ambitious spending programme since the launch of the Vision Fund investment vehicles in 2017 and 2019 – has raised questions about financing pressures on the group.
Critics also say OpenAI no longer enjoys a dominant position among large language model developers as peers such as Alphabet’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude grab market share, while the cost to train and run AI models is also rising.
“It’s a good thing for the industry that competitors are refining business models and providing new services to new users,” Goto told an earnings briefing.
“Overall, that increases the value of the industry.”
In March, S&P Global Ratings revised its credit outlook for SoftBank to negative, saying that OpenAI was exposed to fierce competition and the size of SoftBank’s investment would affect the asset quality and liquidity of its portfolio.
SoftBank has sold off stakes in holdings such as T-Mobile and Nvidia, issued bonds and taken out loans, backed by its holdings in chip designer Arm and its domestic telecommunications arm SoftBank.
SoftBank arranged a bridge loan agreement totalling $40 billion in March. On Wednesday, it said $20 billion was drawn down in April, primarily for the OpenAI investment, and $2.5 billion had already been repaid.
SoftBank had previously said it had agreed to invest a further $30 billion in OpenAI over the course of 2026, which would bring its cumulative investment to $64.6 billion for a 13% stake.
Goto declined to comment on the prospect of a public listing for OpenAI, billed for as early as this year, which, if it goes ahead, would free up capital and improve the credit quality of SoftBank’s portfolio.
But Goto said SoftBank may use its ARM stake to take out a margin loan.
“It’s certainly possible we could use our OpenAI assets for financing in the form of a margin loan. How to make use of this 10 trillion yen asset is an exciting prospect,” Goto said.
SoftBank has also sought to build a portfolio of robotics firms, looking to gain a foothold in an industry that is in its infancy but is seen by analysts and investors as having potential to drive profits into the future.
It agreed to acquire the robotics business of Swiss engineering group ABB in a $5.4 billion deal last year, and created a new subsidiary within the group to hold its robotics-related stakes.
Beyond OpenAI, the group booked a $1.77 billion gain on its investment in chipmaker Intel, which is led by former SoftBank board member Lip-Bu Tan.
