Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks at the SoftBank World event in Tokyo, Japan, Wednesday, July 16, 2025. Speaking via teleconference, Son and OpenAI chief Sam Altman argued that advances in artificial intelligence would lead to new jobs that are not yet imagined, and that advances in robotics would help start a “self-improvement” loop. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Actions of SoftBank Group plunged as much as 10% on Wednesday after the Japanese giant announced it had sold its entire stake in the American chip giant. Nvidia for $5.83 billion. The capital will be used to finance SoftBank’s $22.5 billion investment in OpenAI, parent company of ChatGPT, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.
Shares of SoftBank Group were last trading down more than 6%.
In its earnings report, SoftBank said it sold 32.1 million shares of Nvidia stock in October. It also reduced its position in T-Mobile, raising $9.17 billion.
“We want to provide ample investment opportunities for investors, while maintaining our financial strength,” SoftBank Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said during a presentation to investors.
While the decision to dump Nvidia shares may have caught some investors off guard, this isn’t the first time SoftBank has pulled out of the U.S. chip heavyweight.
The company’s Vision Fund was an early supporter of Nvidia, reportedly building a $4 billion stake in 2017 before divesting completely in January 2019. Despite the latest sale, SoftBank remains closely tied to Nvidia through its broader business interests.
“This is a bullish signal on the SoftBank doubling theme and not a bearish signal in our view,” said Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities.
Although OpenAI is at the heart of SoftBank’s GenAI portfolio, hardware also remains a focus, mainly through its stake in British chip designer Arm, with which SoftBank co-develops products, said Rolf Bulk, equity research analyst at New Street Research. SoftBank owns a majority stake in British company Arm Holdings, whose chip designs power mobile and AI processors.
Several other technology stocks in the region also fell. Semiconductor test equipment manufacturer Advantest and Tokyo Electrona maker of chip production equipment, fell more than 2%.
Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, fell 0.34%. South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix was down 1.62%.
—CNBC’s Dylan Butts and April Roach contributed to this report.
