SoftBank's First-Quarter Profit Surpasses Expectations, Driven by Intel Investment and Vision Fund Growth

SoftBank Group announced its financial results for the first quarter ended June 30, 2025, on Thursday (June 6), revealing performance that significantly exceeded market expectations. The company recorded a net profit attributable to owners of ¥3.4733 trillion (approximately $2.2 billion), down about 17.7% year-on-year but nearly twice the estimates of ¥1.202 trillion to ¥1.658 trillion from analysts at Bloomberg and LSEG. Meanwhile, net sales rose 10.9% year-over-year to ¥2.02 trillion.

The standout contributor to this quarter’s strong performance was its strategic investment in semiconductor giant Intel (INTC-US). SoftBank acquired a 2% stake in Intel for approximately $2 billion in mid-2025. As Intel successfully transformed its business and secured a foundry order from Apple (AAPL-US), its stock price surged over 200% during the quarter, generating an investment gain of ¥1.33 trillion from this single holding alone.

Additionally, the Vision Fund posted a gain of ¥460.1 billion, with valuation growth at ByteDance offsetting losses from other portfolio companies such as PayPay.

Nonetheless, SoftBank faces rising operational costs amid expansion. Financing costs doubled due to bridge loans used to fund its stake in OpenAI. At the same time, R&D spending increases at its chip design subsidiaries Arm and Graphcore widened the loss in the AI computing segment to ¥200.8 billion.

Despite these challenges, CEO Masayoshi Son remains firmly optimistic about the future of AI, calling it a transformation 50 times larger than the internet revolution. SoftBank’s cumulative investment in OpenAI has now reached $4.46 billion, with plans to grow the value of its stake to over $60 billion.