TOKYO (AP) \u2014 Japanese technology investor Softbank Group Corp. reported Wednesday that profits for the fiscal year through March zoomed by nearly five-fold from the previous year as its AI investments paid off.<\/p>\n
The Tokyo-based company recorded an annual profit of 5 trillion yen ($32 billion), far greater than the 1.15 trillion yen profit racked up the previous year.<\/p>\n
Sales climbed nearly 8% on-year to nearly 7.8 trillion yen ($50 billion) from 7.2 trillion yen, the company said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Among its most lucrative investments was OpenAI, in which Softbank has invested $34.6 billion, recording gains of $45 billion.<\/p>\n
SoftBank also invests in U.S. AI company Nvidia, German mobile and internet provider Deutsche Telekom and British semiconductor manufacturer Arm. It also is behind the humanoid robot Pepper. <\/p>\n
SoftBank said it got an additional lift from the initial public offering of PayPay, a popular mobile-payment application in Japan, which allows users to make quick, cashless payments using QR codes.<\/p>\n
Gains from holdings in Intel Corp. offset the minus from those in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.<\/p>\n
Such mixed picture results are typical for SoftBank, which began early in investing in technology for a Japanese company and now oversees a sprawling scope of businesses through what it calls Vision Funds.<\/p>\n
SoftBank was founded more than four decades ago by Masayoshi Son, the company’s chief executive and chairman, who is a University of California graduate and now a billionaire widely considered a pioneer in Japan’s technology sector.<\/p>\n
Softbank recently started a battery business in Japan to build next-generation electric power infrastructure in anticipation of growing electricity demand driven by AI use.<\/p>\n
The company also is working with Toppan, a Japanese printing, communications, security and packaging company, to develop lightweight, durable \u201cskin\u201d material for aircraft wings that is set to be used for commercial services in about three years.<\/p>\n
SoftBank Group does not provide earnings forecasts.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https:\/\/www.threads.com\/@yurikageyama<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TOKYO (AP) \u2014 Japanese technology investor Softbank Group Corp. reported Wednesday that profits for the fiscal year through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21603,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1530,10527,1532,1529,8,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-21602","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tokyo","8":"tag-ap-business","9":"tag-ap-technology","10":"tag-ap-world-news","11":"tag-associated-press","12":"tag-japan","13":"tag-tokyo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21603"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}