LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - SoftBank has sold its entire stake in chip maker Nvidia for nearly $6bn, the Japanese conglomerate confirmed on Tuesday, as it continued to ramp up its investment in artificial intelligence giant OpenAI.
Posting second-quarter numbers, SoftBank confirmed it had sold 32.1m shares in Nvidia last month for $5.83bn.

It also sold part of its T-Mobile stake, for $9.17bn.

SoftBank has long been a repeat investor in Nvidia, a specialist in the advanced semiconductors needed to power AI.

However, the decision to sell down its stake was driven by SoftBank's ongoing commitment to prioritise its investment in ChatGPT-owner OpenAI.

According to the Financial Times, chief financial officer Yoshimitsu Goto told reporters: "This year our investment in OpenAI is large - more than $30bn needs to be made - so for that we need to divest our existing portfolios.

"We did not have a specific [reason to sell] and it was nothing to do with Nvidia itself."

OpenAI helped second-quarter profits at SoftBank more than double to ¥2.5trn (£12.3bn) from ¥1.18trn a year previously, far outstripping analyst forecasts for ¥207bn. Revenues were in line with expectations, at ¥1.9trn.

SoftBank's main Vision Fund posted a $19bn gain during the quarter.

Under founder Masayoshi Son's leadership, SoftBank has transformed itself to become a dominant player in AI, shaking off concerns about a potential bubble.

As well as its investments in Nvidia and Open AI, it has bought into British chip designer Arm, US software giant Oracle and recently acquired the robotics arm from ABB in a $5.4bn deal.

As at 1130 shares in Nvidia were down 1% in pre-market trading.

Russ Mould, investment director at AJ Bell, said: "Softbank is an activity investor and has a deal to invest billions of dollars into OpenAI, which suggests it still sees massive opportunities to make money from the AI revolution.

"Nvidia's role in an AI world is already well known. OpenAI's position is still involving, so it might simply be that SoftBank sees the latter as a better way of profiting from the tech explosion going forward, rather than sticking with yesterday's trailblazer."

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