Overview
- SoftBank reported Q2 net profit of 2.5 trillion yen ($16.6 billion), driven largely by valuation gains tied to its OpenAI holdings, with Vision Fund investment gains totaling 3.5 trillion yen.
- The company disclosed it sold its entire Nvidia stake for about $5.8 billion, announced a 4‑for‑1 stock split for Jan. 1, and detailed funding moves including multi‑currency bond sales and large bridge loans for OpenAI and Ampere.
- Nvidia remains the AI buildout’s linchpin, with CEO Jensen Huang cited as securing roughly $500 billion in data‑center chip orders over the next five quarters, while Bank of America and Goldman Sachs argue the cycle still has room to run.
- Skeptics highlight stretched valuations and execution risks, with analysts flagging steep downside scenarios for popular AI names and reporting pointing to very large losses at OpenAI alongside massive long‑term compute commitments.
- Power constraints loom as a practical bottleneck to AI growth, with the Electric Power Research Institute estimating U.S. data centers could use up to 9% of electricity generation by 2030.