SoftBank Founder Masayoshi Son is pictured here in 2019 during an earnings presentation.
Tomohiro Ohsumi | Getty Images
SoftBank posted an investment gain on its Vision Fund in the fiscal second quarter but booked another quarterly loss.
Here’s how SoftBank did in the September quarter against LSEG estimates:
Net sales: 1.67 trillion Japanese yen ($11 billion) versus 1.6 trillion yen expected
Net loss: 931.1 billion yen ($6.2 billion) versus an expected loss of 114.1 billion yen
For the first half of SoftBank’s fiscal year, it posted a 1.41 trillion loss ($9.3 billion). This compares to a 3 trillion yen profit in the same period last year. SoftBank said a weaker yen hit the company since it has a lot of U.S.-dollar denominated liabilities.
SoftBank’s Vision Fund posted an investment gain of 21.3 billion yen, its second straight quarter of gains. The company said this was due to a gain arising from the sale of shares in chip designer Arm to a subsidiary of SoftBank.
This offset a decline in the value of companies SoftBank is invested in, such as Chinese artificial intelligence firm SenseTime.
“The environment is still tough … but we believe we have hit a bottom and are making good moves towards positive figures,” SoftBank Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said on Thursday during an earnings presentation.
WeWork bankcruptcy hit
However, the overall SoftBank Vision Fund segment posted a pre-tax loss of 258.86 billion yen.
SoftBank recorded a loss of 234.4 billion yen for the half-year period related to the investment and financial support provided to WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. this week. SoftBank was one of the biggest backers of the co-working space firm, which tried and failed to go public five years ago.
Critics of SoftBank’s investment strategy point toward WeWork as an example of a lack of discipline, at times, from the Vision Fund. SoftBank’s high-profile founder Masayoshi Son once said WeWork is at the forefront of a “revolution” in the way people work.
Goto addressed the WeWork bankruptcy and said SoftBank should learn lessons from it.
“First of all, I am very story to hear that. As a company we need to accept this reality and also need to learn the lesson from this for our future investment activity,” Goto said.
SoftBank’s flagship tech investment arm had a rough time in the fiscal year that ended in March this year, posting a record loss of around $32 billion. A slump in tech stock prices and the souring of some of SoftBank’s bets in China were to blame.
In the June quarter, the Vision Fund posted its first investment gain in five consecutive quarters, signalling early signs of growth again. This has coincided with recoveries in the prices of technology stocks.
“We are investing in AI and that’s the main strategy for our company,” Goto said.
Son, who used to lead SoftBank’s earnings presentations with colorful presentations, has not been present for several quarters. But Son has been “devoting himself and involved in the discussion, how and what is going to be the changes in people’s lives from the AI revolution,” Goto said.
The CFO added that SoftBank wants to be a front runner of the AI revolution.
Arm on Wednesday reported its first set of results since its IPO, posting an annual rise in revenue for the September quarter. However, the semiconductor firm gave guidance for the December quarter that disappointed investors, sending its shares lower in after-hours trade in the U.S.
Correction: The headline of this article has been updated to reflect a$6.2 billion quarterly loss.
OpenAI’s new artificial intelligence video app Sora has already grabbed the top spot in Apple‘s App Store as its number one free app, despite being invite-only.
Sora, which was launched on Tuesday, allows users to create short-form AI videos and share them in a feed. The app is available to iPhone users but requires an invite code to access.
Here’s how to snag a Sora app invite code:
First, download the app from the iOS App Store. Note that Sora requires iOS 18.0 or later to be downloaded.
Login using your OpenAI account.
Click “Notify me when access opens.”
A screen will then appear asking for an access code.
Currently, OpenAI has said that it is prioritizing paying ChatGPT Pro users for Sora access. The app is only available in the U.S. and Canada, but is expected to roll out to additional countries soon, the company said.
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If you do not know someone who can provide an access code, several people are sharing invite codes on the official OpenAI Discord server, as well as on X and Reddit threads.
Once you input your access, you will be able to start generating AI videos using text or images. Users are also able to cameo as characters in their videos as well as “remix” other posts.
The app is powered by the new Sora 2.0 model, an updated version of the original Sora model from last year. The video generation model is “physically accurate, realistic, and more controllable” than prior systems, the company said in a blog post.
OpenAI now has two of the top three free apps in Apple’s App Store, and its new video generation app Sora has snagged the coveted No. 1 spot.
The artificial intelligence startup launched Sora on Tuesday, and it allows users to generate short-form AI videos, remix videos created by other users and post them to a shared feed. Sora is only available on iOS devices and is invite-based, which means users need a code to access it.
Despite these restrictions, Sora has secured the top spot in the App Store, ahead of Google‘s Gemini and OpenAI’s generative chatbot ChatGPT.
“It’s been epic to see what the collective creativity of humanity is capable of so far,” Bill Peebles, head of Sora at OpenAI, wrote in a post on X on Friday. “Team is iterating fast and listening to feedback.”
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Sora is powered by OpenAI’s latest video and audio generation model called Sora 2. OpenAI said the model is capable of creating scenes and sounds with “a high degree of realism,” according to a blog post. The startup’s first video and audio generation model, Sora, was announced in February 2024.
OpenAI said it has taken steps to address potential safety concerns around the Sora app, including giving users explicit control over how their likeness is used on the platform. But some of the initial videos posted to the app, including one that depicts OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shoplifting, have sparked debates about its utility, potential for harm and legality.
“It is easy to imagine the degenerate case of AI video generation that ends up with us all being sucked into an RL-optimized slop feed,” Altman wrote in a post on X on Tuesday. “The team has put great care and thought into trying to figure out how to make a delightful product that doesn’t fall into that trap, and has come up with a number of promising ideas.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos speaks with John Elkann, CEO of Exor and chairman of Ferrari at Italian Tech Week on October 3, 2025.
Arjun Kharpal | CNBC
TURIN, Italy — Artificial intelligence is currently in an “industrial bubble” but the technology is “real” and will bring big benefits to society, Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos said on Friday.
The term bubble usually refers to a period of inflated stock prices or valuations of companies that have disconnected from the fundamentals of a business. One of the most famous bubbles that burst was the 2000 dotcom crash where the value of internet companies plummeted.
Exor CEOJohn Elkann asked Bezos on stage at Italian Tech Week in Turin, Italy whether there were signs that the current AI industry is in bubble.
“This is a kind of industrial bubble,” the Amazon founder said.
Bezos laid out some of the key characteristics of bubbles, noting that when they happen, stock prices are “disconnected from the fundamentals” of a business.
“The second thing that happens is that people get very excited like they are today about artificial intelligence,” Bezos added.
During bubbles, every experiment or idea gets funded, he told the audience.
“The good ideas and the bad ideas. And investors have a hard time in the middle of this excitement, distinguishing between the good ideas and the bad ideas. And that’s also probably happening today,” Bezos said.
“But that doesn’t mean anything that is happening isn’t real. AI is real, and it is going to change every industry.”
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