SoftBank’s Vision Fund, the brainchild of the company’s founder Masayoshi Son, has faced a number of headwinds including a slump in technology stocks as a result of rising interest rates, a tough China market and geopolitics.
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SoftBank posted a 724.3 billion Japanese yen ($4.6 billion) gain on its Vision Fund in the fiscal year ended March, the first time the flagship tech investment arm has been in the black since 2021.
For the full fiscal year, SoftBank’s Vision Fund segment posted a profit of 128.2 billion yen, swinging to profit after a 4.3 trillion yen loss the year before.
A recovery in the Vision Fund helped SoftBank Group swing to a profit in the fiscal fourth quarter that ended March.
The Vision Fund was helped by the gain in value of some of SoftBank’s most high-profile investments, including TikTok owner ByteDance and U.S. food delivery firm DoorDash. However, SoftBank took a hit on some of its other investments such as Chinese ride-hailing firm DiDi as well as office sharing company WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year.
The Japanese firm said gains associated with the IPO of Arm, which is a subsidiary of Softbank, are not reported in its “consolidated statement of profit or loss.” Excluding gains associated with Vision Fund’s investments in its subsidiaries, the tech investment arm posted a loss of 167.3 billion yen.
Still, there are signs a recovery is underway for SoftBank which has been hit by bad bets on some tech firms as well as volatile markets.
Here’s how SoftBank did in the March quarter against LSEG estimates:
Net sales: 1.75 trillion yen ($11.3 billion) versus 1.84 trillion yen expected.
Net profit: 231.1 billion yen versus a 71.64 billion yen loss expected.
Still for the full year, SoftBank posted an overall loss of 227.6 billion yen, but that is narrower than the 970.1 billion yen loss from the fiscal year before.
Arm ‘core’ to AI shift
SoftBank’s flagship tech investment arm, the Vision Fund, had a tough time in the fiscal year that ended in March 2023, posting a record loss of around $32 billion amid a slump in tech stock prices and the souring of some of the business’ bets in China.
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son flagged in 2023 that the firm would shift into “offense” mode, from defense mode, and depart from its cautious approach to start making more investments.
SoftBank’s Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said in the previous quarter that SoftBank had shifted from an “Alibaba to AI-centric portfolio.”
The tech conglomerate grew into one of Japan’s biggest companies thanks to Son’s early bet on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba in 2000, which has boomed over the coming years.
The firm has been cutting its stake in Alibaba, and senior executives, including Son and Goto, have touted their excitement around artificial intelligence technology and the SoftBank’s potential to invest in companies in the sector.
Arm has become a central part of SoftBank’s portfolio. At the end of March, Arm accounted for 47% of assets held by SoftBank, compared to just just 10% in March 2020, Goto said on Monday. Alibaba accounts for 0% of assets held versus 48% in the same period.
“Arm is core to our AI shift,” Goto said.
Correction: An earlier version of this article misstated the full-year gain for SoftBank’s Vision Fund.
Waymo announced it is now offering teen accounts for its self-driving car service Waymo One, beginning in Phoenix, Arizona.
Courtesy of Waymo
Waymo announced Tuesday that it is offering accounts for teens ages 14 to 17, starting in Phoenix.
The Alphabet-owned company said that, beginning Tuesday, parents in Phoenix can use their Waymo accounts “to invite their teen into the program, pairing them together.” Once their account is activated, teens can hail fully autonomous rides.
Previously, users were required to be at least 18 years old to sign up for a Waymo account, but the age range expansion comes as the company seeks to increase ridership amid a broader expansion of its ride-hailing service across U.S. cities. Alphabet has also been under pressure to monetize AI products amid increased competition and economic headwinds.
Waymo said it will offer “specially-trained Rider Support agents” during rides hailed by teens and loop in parents if needed. Teens can also share their trip status with their parents for real-time updates on their progress, and parents receive all ride receipts.
Teen accounts are initially only being offered to riders in the metro Phoenix area. Teen accounts will expand to more markets outside California where the Waymo app is available in the future, a spokesperson said.
Waymo’s expansion to teens follows a similar move by Uber, which launched teen accounts in 2023. Waymo, which has partnerships with Uber in multiple markets, said it “may consider enabling access for teens through our network partners in the future.”
Already, Waymo provides more than 250,000 paid trips each week across Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Austin, Texas, and the company is preparing to bring autonomous rides to Miami and Washington, D.C., in 2026.
In June, Waymo announced that it plans to manually drive vehicles in New York, marking the first step toward potentially cracking the largest U.S. city. Waymo said it applied for a permit with the New York City Department of Transportation to operate autonomously with a trained specialist behind the wheel in Manhattan.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives at the White House to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump on Feb. 13, 2025 in Washington, DC.
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Elon Musk’s X said Tuesday that the Indian government ordered the company to block 2,355 accounts, including Reuters, in the country.
“The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology demanded immediate action- within one hour- without providing justification, and required the accounts to remain blocked until further notice,” X’s global government affairs account posted.
The main Reuters account, along with ReutersWorld, was blocked Saturday for users in India, the news service said. Screenshots showed the message “Account withheld @Reuters has been withheld in IN in response to a legal demand.”
The Indian government’s Press Information Bureau told Reuters that no government agency had required blocking the account and said it was working with X to resolve the issue. The accounts were restored on Sunday.
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The statement by X on Tuesday is the latest development in an ongoing censorship legal battle between Musk’s social media site and the Indian government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
X sued Modi’s government in March, accusing India’s IT ministry of unlawfully expanding online censorship to allow the easier removal of content.
Musk often refers to himself as a free speech absolutist and has said his takeover of Twitter was partly due to what he viewed as the unfair restriction of conservative views and voices.
The Tesla CEO swiftly made changes to moderation after he acquired the site, which he later renamed to X.
Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev says it’s not “entirely relevant” that the trading platform’s so-called tokenized shares of OpenAI and SpaceX aren’t technically equity in the companies.
It comes after OpenAI raised concerns about the product, which is designed to give users in the European Union exposure to various U.S. stocks — including private companies, which are less liquid than publicly listed firms.
OpenAI last week warned that Robinhood’s stock tokens do not represent equity in the company and said in a post on X that, “any transfer of OpenAI equity requires our approval — we did not approve any transfer.”
Robinhood says its OpenAI stock tokens are “enabled by Robinhood’s ownership stake in a special purpose vehicle.”
“It is true that these are not technically equity,” Tenev, who co-founded Robinhood in 2013 with fellow entrepreneur Baiju Bhatt, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” Tuesday, echoing his initial response to OpenAI’s concerns.
Tenev said that OpenAI’s complex company structure enables institutional investors to gain exposure to the company through “various instruments, like equity upon the event of a conversion to a for-profit at a later date.”
OpenAI was initially founded as a non-profit organization. However, it has since evolved to include a for-profit entity, which is owned by the non-profit.
“In and of itself, I don’t think it’s entirely relevant that it’s not technically an equity instrument,” he said. “What’s important is that retail customers have an opportunity to get exposure to this asset” — even if it’s a private company — due to the disruptive nature of AI, he added.
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On Monday, the Bank of Lithuania, which is Robinhood’s lead authority in the European Union, told CNBC it was “awaiting clarifications” regarding the structure of the company’s stock tokens following OpenAI’s statement last week.
“Only after receiving and evaluating this information will we be able to assess the legality and compliance of these specific instruments,” Bank of Lithuania spokesman Giedrius Šniukas told CNBC. “The information for investors must be provided in clear, fair, and non-misleading language.”
Tenev said in response to the Lithuanian regulator’s comments that Robinhood is “happy to continue to answer questions from our regulators.”
“Since this is a new thing, regulators are going to want to look at it, and we’ve built this program in a way that we believe will withstand scrutiny — and we expect to be scrutinized as a large, innovative player in this space,” he told CNBC.