SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son delivers remarks next to U.S. President Donald Trump at an ‘Investing in America’ event in Washington, D.C., U.S., April 30, 2025.
Leah Millis | Reuters
Softbank‘s Vision Fund business on Tuesday posted a loss in the fiscal year ended March as it booked slowing gains at its massive tech investment arm.
SoftBank said it notched a gain on investment at its Vision Funds of 434.9 billion yen in the fiscal year, a 40% fall from the 724.3 billion yen booked in the previous year.
In its fiscal fourth quarter — the three months ended March — SoftBank’s Vision Funds segment recorded a 26.1 billion yen gain, helped by a rise in the value of TikTok owner ByteDance.
The Vision Fund segment overall logged a pretax loss of 115.02 billion yen ($777.7 mllion) versus a profit of 128.2 billion yen in the previous fiscal year.
For the latest fiscal year, SoftBank saw gains on its investments in Chinese ridehailing company Didi as well as South Korean e-commerce firm Coupang. However, the performance of its investment arm was hurt by a drop in value of companies including AutoStore.
The Vision Funds are a key focus for investors who are looking for signs of improvement at SoftBank’s huge investment arm, after it swung to a surprise loss in the company’s fiscal third quarter.
SoftBank’s investment division can be inconsistent, as it is driven by changes in public and private financial markets.
SoftBank’s stock is down about 17% this year as volatility in financial markets and concerns about the macroeconomic environment continues to weigh on the company.
SoftBank hits back at Stargate funding report
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has sought to position company as a key player in artificial intelligence through various investments and acquisitions. The firm owns the majority of semiconductor designer Arm and announced plans this year to acquire server chip designer Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion. Ampere’s semiconductors are designed to run AI applications.
One of SoftBank’s biggest AI bets has been on OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. SoftBank invested $30 billion in OpenAI as part of a broader $40 billion financing round in March that valued the startup at $300 billion.
Softbank is also involved in Stargate, a joint venture that was unveiled by U.S. President Donald Trump in January, calling for hundreds of billions of dollars of investment into AI infrastructure.
There are still questions about how SoftBank plans to finance these ventures and whether it will need to sell down some of its holdings in companies like Arm.
Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg had on Monday reported that dozens of financial players are reassessing investment in data centers due to growing economic volatility, and SoftBank has yet to come up with a financing template for Stargate.
Yoshimitsu Goto, chief finance officer at SoftBank, said during a Tuesday press conference that media reports of banks hesitating to fund SoftBank’s efforts are not true.
“We are very much making progress,” Goto said.
He added there are around 100 proposals being made for sites to build data centers as part of Stargate, with the first facilities likely to be in Texas.
SoftBank swings to profit
SoftBank posted its first annual profit in four years at 1.15 trillion yen.
While the Vision Fund was an overall drag on profit, it was a big gain in SoftBank’s older investments in Alibaba, T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom, that helped drive its overall profit.
Arm and SoftBank’s telecommunications business also contributed positively to the group’s overall profitability.
By midday Tuesday, bitcoin had passed the $105,000 level, ether jumped back above the $2,400 mark, and XRP climbed to $2.19.
The risk-on action in the markets, which also saw stocks rally on the Mideast de-escalation, wasn’t the only source of momentum, as Republican senators unveiled a major bill to set the rules of the road for crypto. Specifically, the legislation would define when crypto is a commodity or a security, allow crypto exchanges to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and reduce the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulation of digital assets — a big reversal from the plans of President Biden’s SEC Chair Gary Gensler to closely regulate the crypto industry.
The new framework was introduced by Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Scott of South Carolina and Senator Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, who heads the panel’s Digital Assets Committee. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the regulatory development was important for the U.S. to regain the lead in the crypto industry, where he said it has fallen behind other markets, including Europe.
Last week, the senate passed a stablecoin bill, marking the first major legislative win for the crypto industry, which now heads to the House for consideration of its version of the bill. Both bills prohibit yield-bearing consumer stablecoins — but differ on agency regulatory oversight. Visa CEO Ryan McInerney weighed in on the advancement of the Senate version, the Genius Act, telling CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” that the credit card giant has been embracing stablecoins.
Meanwhile, investors increased their bets on crypto company Digital Asset, which raised $135 million in funding from several big names in banking and finance, including Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas and hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin’s Citadel Securities. The firm, which touts itself as a regulated crypto player, said it will use the funding to advance adoption of its Canton network, which is a blockchain for financial institutions, another sign of how major financial institutions are embedding themselves into the once obscure crypto world.
Thomas Fuller | SOPA Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Ambarella shares popped 19% after a report that the chip designer is currently working with bankers on a potential sale.
Bloomberg reported the news, citing sources familiar with the matter.
While no deal is imminent, the sources told Bloomberg that the firm may draw interest from semiconductor companies looking to improve their automotive business. Private equity firms have already expressed interest, according to the report.
Read more CNBC tech news
The Santa Clara, California-based company is known for its system-on-chip semiconductors and software used for edge artificial intelligence. Ambarella chips are used in the automotive sector for electronic mirrors and self-driving assistance systems.
Shares have slumped about 18% year to date. The company’s market capitalization last stood at nearly $2.6 billion.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang attends a roundtable discussion at the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 11, 2025.
The sales are worth nearly $15 million at Tuesday’s opening price.
The transactions are the first sale in Huang’s plan to sell as many as 600,000 shares of Nvidia through the end of 2025. It’s a plan that was announced in March, and it’d be worth $873 million at Tuesday’s opening price.
The Nvidia founder still owns more than 800 million Nvidia shares, according to Monday’s SEC filing. Huang has a net worth of about $126 billion, ranking him 12th on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Nvidia stock is up more than 800% since December 2022 after OpenAI’s ChatGPT was first released to the public. That launch drew attention to Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, which were needed to develop and power the artificial intelligence service.
The company’s chips remain in high demand with the majority of the AI chip market, and Nvidia has introduced two subsequent generations of its AI GPU technology.
Nvidia continues to grow. Its stock is up 9% this year, even as the company faces export control issues that could limit foreign markets for its AI chips.
In May, the company reported first-quarter earnings that showed the chipmaker’s revenue growing 69% on an annual basis to $44 billion during the quarter.