Topline
SoftBank Group’s shares slumped sharply on Wednesday, a day after the Japanese tech investment giant announced it had sold its entire stake in chipmaker Nvidia to fund its investments in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and other bets on artificial intelligence.
SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son arrives for an event titled “Transforming Business through AI” in Tokyo.
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Key Facts
Softbank’s Tokyo-listed shares slipped by as much as 10% on Wednesday, hitting a near-one month low.
The stock recovered some of its losses and ended the day at ¥21,910 ($141.50), down 3.46% from the previous day, despite the Tokyo Stock Exchange’s benchmark Nikkei Index rising 0.43%.
The slide comes amid concerns about a potential market bubble, while SoftBank presses forward with more than $30 billion in AI investments.
The company’s Vision Fund 2 will invest $22.5 billion in OpenAI, while the company also agreed to acquire chipmaker Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion and electrical equipment manufacturer ABB’s robotics division for $5.4 billion.
During the company’s quarterly earnings call on Tuesday, Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said he didn’t think he could answer “whether this is a bubble or not.”
Forbes Valuation
According to our estimates, Softbank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son’s current net worth is $69.4 billion, down from $72.2 billion on Tuesday. This makes him the 27th richest person in the world on Forbes’ Real Time Billionaires’ list and Asia’s fourth-richest, after dropping one spot below India’s Gautam Adani. Son still remains Japan’s richest person.