Japan's SoftBank reports loss weeks after announcing AI investment with U.S. President Trump

Japan's SoftBank reports loss

Photo: AP

SoftBank Chief Masayoshi Son, left, and OpenAI Chief Sam Altman hold a talk during an event for enterprises in Tokyo, in Tokyo, Monday, Feb. 3, 2025. 

Japanese technology company SoftBank Group Corp. reported a 369.2 billion yen ($2.4 billion) loss for the fiscal third quarter as it racked up red ink from its Vision Fund investments.

That's compared to a 950 billion yen profit in October-December 2023.

Quarterly sales rose 3% from the previous year to 1.83 trillion yen ($11.9 billion), the Tokyo-based company said Wednesday.

The report comes barely a month after Masayoshi Son, the founder and chief executive, appeared with President Donald Trump in Washington, as well as with Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle, to announce an investment of up to $500 billion into an artificial intelligence project called Stargate.

Son has repeatedly said the company is banking on a future in artificial intelligence.

SoftBank Group invests in an array of companies that it sees as holding long-term potential, including unlisted upstarts, so its financial performance tends to swing wildly.

For the nine months of this fiscal year through December, it recorded a profit of 636 billion yen ($4 billion), a reversal from a loss of 459 billion for the previous year.

Investment gains were recorded in its holdings in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba; Coupang, a South Korean retailer based in the U.S.; a mobility service provider DiDi Global and Grab Holdings, a Singaporean technology company, while improved sales came in its British semiconductor company Arm’s business.

Some of the investment gains from the earlier months of this fiscal year were erased in the latest quarter. The company does not issue an annual forecast.