SoftBank Group Reports Profit Beat, Boosted by Intel Stake — Update

By Kosaku Narioka

SoftBank Group reported a drop in first-quarter profit due to lower gains from its Vision Funds business, though its bottom line still beat expectations, helped by a surge in the value of its stake in Intel.

The Japanese technology investment company said Thursday that net profit fell 18% from a year earlier to 347.33 billion yen, equivalent to $2.20 billion, for the three months ended June. That still beat the estimate of Y125.9 billion in a poll of analysts by data provider Visible Alpha.

In August 2025, Softbank agreed to invest $2 billion in Intel at $23 a share. Intel shares recently traded at around $101, helping boost the value of Softbank's stake in the U.S. chip maker.

SoftBank said it booked an investment gain of Y1.333 trillion on Intel shares.

Softbank's stake in Intel is held separately from its Vision Funds business, which owns stakes in various technology companies such as OpenAI and ByteDance.

The Vision Funds business posted profit of Y5.43 billion, sharply lower from the Y451.39 billion profit in the same period a year earlier, which had been boosted by gains in e-commerce company Coupang and others.

SoftBank said the value of its stake in OpenAI--the maker of the widely used artificial-intelligence chatbot ChatGPT--hasn't changed since the end of March. It added that its Vision Fund 2 plans to borrow $10.0 billion against its OpenAI shares this month.

Investors are keenly watching Softbank given concerns about intense fundraising by companies for capital expenditure on AI as well as worries over whether these efforts will create a blockbuster engine for profits in the future.

The Japanese technology investment company has made several large investments in OpenAI and plans to make another $10 billion investment in October. That would bring SoftBank's total investment in OpenAI to $64.6 billion, representing a stake of about 13%.

In late May, SoftBank Group unveiled a $52 billion data-center plan in France to tap the country's nuclear-driven power surplus and diversify its data-center footprint outside the U.S. and Japan.

Last week, Softbank unit Arm Holdings posted higher fiscal first-quarter net profit as demand for its chip designs continued to grow across AI infrastructure and data centers.

Write to Kosaku Narioka at kosaku.narioka@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

August 06, 2026 06:05 ET (10:05 GMT)