Further AI derivatives of the Vision Fund resulted in a gain of $19 billion recorded by SoftBank, backed by the Japanese giant in the second fiscal quarter following its investments in the ChatGPT maker, OpenAI, and the PayPay.
The larger Vision Fund branch also includes non-investment performance, including administrative costs and gains, and losses that are attributed to third-party investors.
Therefore, in the fiscal first quarter of the company, the value of the fund had increased by $4.8 billion.
Softbank is continuing its push into the field of artificial intelligence, investing in and buying companies that will serve to strengthen its presence in robots and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI).
Softbank reported in an investor briefing on the results that the results hit “new highs” with AI revenues achieving 93 percent of annualized growth.
The investment of the company in OpenAI generated gains amounting to 2.157 trillion yen ($14 billion) in the quarter.
The company also announced on Tuesday that it will do a four-to-one share stock split at the end of the year, in an attempt to make its stock more accessible to investors and to widen its shareholder base even further.
The performance of SoftBank in the fiscal second quarter is as follows: profit reached 2.502 trillion yen during the quarter, as compared to 206.89 billion yen projected, as per LSEG consensus estimates, and it is also comparable to 1.18 trillion yen net profit in the previous year.
Meanwhile, the revenue reached 1.92 trillion yen in the quarter compared with 1.9 trillion yen estimated by LSEG.
The Japanese conglomerate has been experiencing a decline in its stock over the past week, as concerns have risen about an AI bubble that rattled world markets.
The stock lost almost $50 billion in market cap last week, which was its largest weekly loss since March 2020.
Therefore, its stock is performing better than 140 percent this year, when its technology investment wing has been indicating improvement.
In the past month, Softbank has been reported to have given its final tranche of funding to finalize its $30 billion investment in OpenAI.
The Japanese company invested in the ChatGPT developer with the condition that their overall investment would be reduced to no less than $20 billion in case OpenAI did not reorganize itself as a profit-making entity by December 31.
The AI startup has recently gone through a recapitalization, now being organized as a nonprofit with a majority stake in an associated for-profit business, now a public benefit corporation named OpenAI Group PBC.
In its earnings statement on Tuesday, Softbank said it will invest another $22.5 billion in OpenAI in December under its Vision Fund 2.
