{"id":70872,"date":"2026-05-14T11:34:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T11:34:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/70872\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T11:34:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T11:34:20","slug":"japans-softbank-sees-huge-gains-with-lift-from-ai-investments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/70872\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan’s SoftBank sees huge gains with lift from AI investments"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> 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<\/a>, in which Softbank has invested $34.6 billion, recording gains of $45 billion.<\/p>\n

SoftBank also invests in U.S. AI company Nvidia<\/a>, German mobile and internet provider Deutsche Telekom and British semiconductor manufacturer Arm. It also is behind the humanoid robot Pepper<\/a>. <\/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<\/a>, the company\u2019s chief executive and chairman, who is a University of California graduate and now a billionaire widely considered a pioneer in Japan\u2019s 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<\/a><\/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":70873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[157],"tags":[6017,552,252,474,40932,2326,5908,6497,1665,835,1015,4267,251,682,1009,11508,11507,3986,584,262,52,40933],"class_list":{"0":"post-70872","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-masayoshi-son","8":"tag-alibaba-group-holding-ltd","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-asia-pacific","11":"tag-business","12":"tag-deutsche-telekom-ag","13":"tag-earnings","14":"tag-finance-business","15":"tag-financial-performance","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-information-technology","18":"tag-intel-corp","19":"tag-international","20":"tag-japan","21":"tag-masayoshi-son","22":"tag-nvidia-corp","23":"tag-openai-inc","24":"tag-semiconductor-manufacturing","25":"tag-softbank-group-corp","26":"tag-technology","27":"tag-tokyo","28":"tag-world-news","29":"tag-yuri-kageyama"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116572721210394222","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}