SoftBank Group Corp more than doubled its second-quarter (Q2) net profit to 2.5 trillion yen (US$16.6 billion) as the value of its investment in OpenAI surged and it announced a share split.
That compares with a net profit of 1.18 trillion yen for the same period of the previous year for the Japanese technology investment company.
SoftBank's Vision Fund unit posted an investment gain of 3.5 trillion yen, primarily from the group's holding in OpenAI, the developer of the ChatGPT large language model, which totalled 2.16 trillion yen for the quarter.
SoftBank's total investment in OpenAI is expected to reach $34.7 billion by the end of December this year, according to a Reuters story.
The company said, as its share price had almost quadrupled in just over six months, it had decided to implement a share split to make its shares more accessible to investors and expand its investor base.
It will issue three shares for every existing share, increasing the number of shares on issue from 1.427 billion to 4.283 billion.
“Going forward, SBG will continue to carefully assess the need for further reductions in the investment unit, taking into account factors such as share price, trading volume, number of shareholders, and shareholder composition,” Softbank said in a statement.
It is accelerating fundraising for artificial intelligence (AI) investments by selling shareholdings such as its stake in AI market leader Nvidia for $5.83 billion and issuing bonds and taking out bridging loans.
Softbank also sold part of its stake in T-Mobile for $9.17 billion, and since April, it has issued bonds in three currencies worth 620 billion yen, $2.2 billion and 1.7 billion euros ($1.98 billion) respectively.
In March, SoftBank agreed to lead a funding round of up to $40 billion in OpenAI at a valuation of $300 billion, and in October, it was among the investors buying $6.6 billion of shares from OpenAI employees at a valuation of $500 billion, according to Reuters.
