SoftBank posts fourth straight quarterly profit

Japan’s SoftBank Group reported a net profit of 248.6 billion yen ($1.62 billion) for the October–December quarter, marking its fourth consecutive quarterly profit.

Japan’s SoftBank Group reported a net profit of 248.6 billion yen ($1.62 billion) for the October–December quarter, marking its fourth consecutive quarterly profit.

According to its earnings statement released on Thursday, the Vision Fund posted a gain of about $2.4 billion in the third fiscal quarter. The group also recorded valuation gains of $17 billion from its investment in OpenAI since April.

CEO Yoshimitsu Goto said 60% of SoftBank’s assets are now allocated to artificial superintelligence investments, in line with founder Masayoshi Son’s vision that technology surpassing human intelligence by thousands of times could emerge within the next decade.

As part of an operational restructuring, SoftBank launched a new segment named the AI Computing Platform, which includes chip designer Arm and semiconductor companies Graphcore and Ampere.

The report showed the group’s loan-to-value ratio rose to 20.6% at the end of December, up from 16.5% three months earlier, while its cash reserves fell to 3.8 trillion yen.