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With the equipment of Japanese conglomerates and their son of founder Masayoshi, SoftBank lost $2.4 billion in its third quarter to fund one of the world’s largest AI bets ever.
The tech group said on Wednesday it lost 369.2 billion yen ($2.4 billion), compared with a growth rate of 95 billion yen a year ago, while analysts’ forecasts were missing 23.4 billion yen in net profit. .
After two consecutive gains, SoftBank suffered a loss of 32.7 billion yen in its technology-rich investment vehicle, namely vision funds.
“It seems the biggest change is that they have suffered some losses in their private portfolios, and in the vision fund, they have not exploded, but the unclear numbers for the quarter are important,” said Astris’ Kirk Boodry. Consultation in Tokyo.
The often volatile vision funds have also been hit by the valuations of some of their highly-known listed companies, including those of South Korean e-commerce group Coupang and China riding group DIDI.
“But everyone wants to know how they will deal with AI, what is happening at Stargate and how they will fund it,” Boodry added.
The son is working to fund a large U.S. AI infrastructure project called “Stargate”, and he announced his partnership with Sam Altman’s Openai last month. The Japan Group plans to initially invest about $15 billion to $20 billion in Stargate, with spending expected to be $50 billion over the next four years.
SoftBank will also invest $15 billion to $25 billion in Openai as the core of a wider round of funding, which could lead to Chatgpt creators raising up to $40 billion.
This is a development story
