SoftBank has faced headwinds in its Vision Fund investment division due to a fall in technology company valuations amid rising interest rates.
Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images
SoftBank recorded a record loss for its Vision Fund as a recent rally in tech stocks has done little to help another difficult year for its flagship investment unit.
The Japanese giant’s Vision Fund segment posted a 4.3 trillion Japanese yen ($32 billion) loss for its fiscal year ending Mar. 31 versus a 2.55 trillion yen loss in the same period a year before.
SoftBank posted an overall loss on investments at its Vision Funds of 5.28 trillion Japanese yen versus 3.43 trillion yen a year before. Despite a rally this year in tech stocks, they are broadly still lower than a year ago. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 index declined about 11% during SoftBank’s fiscal year.
Overall, SoftBank posted a net loss of 970.14 billion yen for the fiscal year, narrower than the 1.7 trillion loss in the same period a year before.
Despite gains from exiting investments in high-profile companies like ride-hailing firm Uber, SoftBank said that it logged losses in areas including the share prices of Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime and Indonesian ride-hailing and e-commerce company GoTo.
Over the past year, SoftBank has been exiting some of its highest-profile investments to raise cash. It narrowed its overall losses through sales of shares in T-Mobile and Alibaba. It continues to offload some of its shares in the latter company via a derivative called a forward contract, after Son made his fortune with an early investment in Alibaba more than two decades ago.
In August, it said it had sold its remaining stake in U.S. ride-hailing giant Uber.
The companies that SoftBank has invested in are well capitalized, according to the Japanese giant’s Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto. He said SoftBank has a number of companies ready to go public, which are valued at a combined $37 billion. He did not name these companies.
The brainchild of founder Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s Vision Fund comprises Vision Fund 1 and Vision Fund 2 and invests in high growth stocks, which have faced headwinds from rising interest rates globally causing investors to sell out of riskier equities such as tech.
Amid mounting losses, Son’s key ally and top SoftBank executive Rajeev Misra stepped back from some of his roles at the company. Misra was instrumental in the early days of the Vision Fund, which was launched in 2017.
That tactic appeared to be working in SoftBank’s fiscal fourth quarter from January to March, helped by the rally in tech stocks. SoftBank’s Vision Funds recorded investment losses 236.8 billion yen in the period, versus 730.3 billion yen in the quarter before.
SoftBank said it made $3.14 billion in new or follow-on investments in its fiscal year, down from $44.26 billion in the same period of a year prior.
During a press conference on Thursday, Goto said that it has been an “unstable” year marked by geopolitical risks and financial system instability, citing the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and issues at Credit Suisse.
“In the first quarter, we may be able to see some signs of improvement, however we are not expecting a fundamental resolution … for those issues,” Goto said.
He nevertheless said that artificial intelligence technology is making “dramatic progress” with the company, weighing up whether to stay in defense mode.
“With those situations should we just keep in defense or should we keep a balance with offense?” Goto asked.
SoftBank agreed to acquire Arm in 2016. Goto said that he was unable to discuss Arm at length due to the confidential filing in the U.S., but said preparation for the IPO is “going smoothly.”
Arm posted sales of 381.7 billion yen in the fiscal year, up more than 27% year-on-year. The company’s pre-tax income rose 18% year-on-year to 48.6 billion yen.
Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems said on Friday that it’s withdrawing plans for an IPO, days after announcing that it raised over $1 billion in a fundraising round.
In a filing with the SEC, Cerebras said it does not intend to conduct a proposed offering “at this time,” but didn’t provide a reason. A spokesperson told CNBC on Friday that the company still hopes to go public as soon as possible.
Cerebras filed for an IPO just over a year ago, as it was ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models. The filing revealed a heavy reliance on a single customer in the United Arab Emirates, Microsoft-backed G42, which is also a Cerebras investor.
In its prospectus, Cerebras said it had given voluntary notice to the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States about selling shares to G42. In March, the company announced that the committee had provided clearance.
Since its initial filing to go public on the Nasdaq, Cerebras has shifted its focus away from selling systems and more toward providing a cloud service for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath.
The announced withdrawal comes three days into a U.S. government shutdown that’s left agencies like the SEC operating with a small staff. In a plan for a shutdown published in August, the SEC said its electronic system EDGAR “is operated pursuant to a contract and thus will remain fully functional as long as funding for the contractor remains available through permitted means.”
On Tuesday, Cerebras said it had raised $1.1 billion at a valuation of $8.1 billion in a private funding round. At the time, CEO Andrew Feldman said that the company still wanted to go public, rather than continue to raise venture capital.
“I don’t think this is an indication of a preference for one or the other,” he told CNBC in an interview. “I think we have tremendous opportunities in front of us, and I think it’s good practice, when you have enormous opportunities, not to let them fall by the wayside for lack of capital.”
Feldman thought the original prospectus from last year was out of date, especially considering developments in AI, the spokesperson said on Friday.
Well heeled technology companies have been quickly signing up for additional infrastructure to handle demand. On Tuesday CoreWeave, which rents out Nvidia chips through a cloud service, said it had signed a $14.2 billion agreement with Meta. ChatGPT operator OpenAI said last week that it had committed to spending $300 billion on cloud services from Oracle.
The government shutdown did not factor into Cerebras’ decision, the spokesperson said.
An employee arranges a salad dressing display at an Amazon Fresh grocery store on December 12, 2024 in Federal Way, Washington.
David Ryder | Getty Images
Amazon is closing four more Fresh supermarkets in Southern California as the e-commerce giant continues to focus its grocery strategy around Whole Foods and delivery.
The closures will take place in the coming weeks, Amazon confirmed to CNBC. They follow the shuttering of four other U.S. locations in recent months, in Washington, Virginia, New York and a Los Angeles suburb.
“Certain locations work better than others, and after an assessment, we’ve made the decision to close these Amazon Fresh locations,” Amazon spokesperson Griffin Buch said in a statement. “We’re working closely with affected employees to help them find new roles within Amazon wherever possible.”
At one Fresh supermarket in La Verne, California, employees were told to gather for an all-hands meeting on Wednesday, according to an internal message viewed by CNBC. They learned at the meeting that the store would close in mid-November, and that employees would receive a severance package, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the details were confidential.
The other three stores that are closing are in cities of Mission Viejo, La Habra and Whittier.
Last week, Amazon said it intends to close 14 Fresh grocery stores in the U.K. and convert its five other locations there into Whole Foods markets.
Amazon said it regularly evaluates its store portfolio, which can lead to opening, reopening, relocating or closing certain locations. In the U.S., the company has more than 60 remaining Fresh stores. Last year, the company removed its “Just Walk Out” cashierless technology from the stores. It’s also been culling its footprint of Go cashierless convenience stores.
Amazon has been determined to become a major grocery player for nearly two decades. The company launched Amazon Fresh in 2007, then a pilot project for fresh food delivery, before acquiring upscale chain Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in 2017, its biggest purchase on record.
Amazon debuted its Fresh grocery chain in 2020, with an eye toward mass-market shoppers. The rollout has been turbulent since its early days.
The company opened a flurry of Fresh locations by 2022, but the expansion plans ran into CEO Andy Jassy’s widespread cost-cutting efforts as the company reckoned with the impact of rising interest rates and soaring inflation. In 2023, Amazon announced it would shut some Fresh stores and halt further openings temporarily as it evaluated how to make the chain stand out for shoppers.
While it’s closing Fresh stores, Amazon continues to “innovate and invest in making grocery shopping easier, faster, and more affordable,” Buch said. The company still maintains 500 Whole Foods locations and has opened mini “daily shop” Whole Foods stores in New York City.
On Wednesday, Amazon also launched a new “price-conscious” grocery brand that will be offered online and in its physical stores. And last month, Amazon expanded same-day delivery of fresh foods to more pockets of the U.S.
Jassy and other company executives have touted the success of sales of “everyday essentials” within its online grocery business, which refers to items such as canned goods, paper towels, dish soap and snacks. Jassy told investors at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in May that he remains “bullish” on grocery, calling it a “significant business” for Amazon.
Inside Google’s quantum computing lab in Santa Barbara, California.
CNBC
Quantum computing stocks are wrapping up a big week of double-digit gains.
Shares of Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum and Quantum Computing have surged more than 20%. Rigetti and D-Wave Quantum have more than doubled and tripled, respectively, since the start of the year. Arqit Quantum skyrocketed more than 32% this week.
The jump in shares followed a wave of positive news in the quantum space.
Rigetti said it had purchase orders totalling $5.7 million for two of its 9-qubit Novera quantum computing systems. The owner of drugmaker Novo Nordisk and the Danish government also invested 300 million euros in a quantum venture fund.
In a blog post earlier this week, Nvidia also highlighted accelerated computing, which it argues can make “quantum computing breakthroughs of today and tomorrow possible.”