SoftBank founder ‘cried’ about selling Nvidia stake to fund AI bets

TOKYO - SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son said he would not have sold off Nvidia shares if his company had unlimited money to bankroll its next investments in artificial intelligence (AI), which include a big bet on OpenAI.

Mr Son, addressing for the first time the surprise November disclosure that

SoftBank had unloaded its entire stake

in the world’s most valuable company, also slammed talk of an AI investment bubble. The Japanese company simply needed to raise capital to fund projects including data centre construction, he told a forum in Tokyo on Dec 1.

“I don’t want to sell a single share. I just had more need for money to invest in OpenAI” and other projects, Mr Son said at the FII Priority Asia forum. “I was crying to sell Nvidia shares.”

SoftBank has doubled down on its bets on AI through a flurry of projects that include a Stargate data centre with Hon Hai Precision Industry, the acquisition of US chip designer Ampere Computing, and plans to invest more in OpenAI by the end of 2025.

People who talk about a bubble around AI investment are “not smart enough”, the 68-year-old SoftBank chief executive said. If AI is able to earn 10 per cent of global gross domestic product over the long term, that would more than make up for even trillions of dollars’ worth of cumulative spending, he said. “Where is the bubble?”

Mr Son made his remarks at an offshoot of one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest investment summits. The Tokyo forum featured appearances by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and the country’s finance and economy ministers, reflecting deepening ties between the kingdom and Japan. 

Mr Son’s first Vision Fund was set up with US$45 billion (S$58.3 billion) in funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).

The PIF has invested about US$11.5 billion in Japan from 2017 to 2024 and expects that total to grow to around US$27 billion by the end of 2030, PIF governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan said at the same event. BLOOMBERG