SoftBank's Masayoshi Son 'cried' about Nvidia stake sale to fund AI bets

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By Min Jeong Lee and Mayumi Negishi 

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

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 center construction, he told a forum in Tokyo Monday. 

“I don’t want to sell a single share. I just had more need for money to invest in OpenAI” and other projects, Son said during 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 center with Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the acquisition of US chip designer Ampere Computing LLC, and plans to invest more in OpenAI by the end of this year. 

People who talk about a bubble around AI investment are “not smart enough,” the 68-year-old SoftBank chief executive officer said. If AI is able to earn 10% 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?” 

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

Son’s first Vision Fund was set up with $45 billion in funding from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The PIF has invested about $11.5 billion in Japan from 2017 to 2024 and expects that total to grow to around $27 billion by the end of 2030, Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan said at the same event.