SoftBank shares plunge as much as 10% after selling Nvidia stake
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group Corp., speaks at the SoftBank World event on Wednesday, July 16, 2025, in Tokyo, Japan. Speaking via teleconference, Son and OpenAI chief Sam Altman argued that advancing AI will lead to new jobs not yet imagined, and that progress in robotics will help usher in a cycle of “personal development.” Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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SoftBank Group’s shares fell as much as 10 percent on Wednesday after the Japanese giant said it was selling its entire stake in US chip giant Nvidia for $5.83 billion. The capital will be used to finance SoftBank’s $22.5 billion investment in ChatGPT parent OpenAI, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC.
Shares of SoftBank Group last traded down more than 6%.
SoftBank announced in its earnings report that it sold 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October. It also reduced its T-Mobile position, raising $9.17 billion.
“We want to offer investors many investment opportunities while maintaining our financial strength,” SoftBank chief financial officer Yoshimitsu Goto said during an investor presentation.
While the decision to pull Nvidia shares caught some investors off guard, this isn’t SoftBank’s first exit from the US chip heavyweight.
The company’s Vision Fund was an early backer of Nvidia, reportedly acquiring a $4 billion stake in 2017 before divesting entirely in January 2019. Despite the latest sale, SoftBank remains closely tied to Nvidia through its broader business interests.
“This is a bullish signal for SoftBank to double down and is not a bearish sign in our view,” said Dan Ives, head of global technology research at Wedbush Securities.
While OpenAI is at the center of SoftBank’s GenAI portfolio, hardware also remains a priority, mostly due to SoftBank’s stake in British chip designer Arm, with which it develops products, said Rolf Bulk, an equity research analyst at New Street Research. SoftBank owns a majority stake in UK-based Arm Holdings, which powers mobile and AI processors with its chip designs.
Some other technology stocks in the region also fell. Semiconductor test equipment manufacturer Advantest and Tokyo ElectronThe chip manufacturing equipment maker lost over 2%.
Taiwan’s TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, fell 0.34%. South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix fell 1.62%.
—CNBC’s Dylan Butts and April Roach contributed to this report.
