SoftBank announced that it sold all approximately 32.1 million shares in Nvidia in October, receiving around $5.83 billion in proceeds.
The sale aligns with a broader plan to increase its commitment to OpenAI and related AI-platform plays, rather than simply betting on the hardware side of the AI ecosystem.
According to the company’s earnings release and subsequent filings, the proceeds are earmarked to fund its larger OpenAI investment, which totals tens of billions of dollars.
When asked, SoftBank CFO Yoshimitsu Goto clarified that the move was not a reflection of concern about Nvidia’s fundamentals but rather a strategic decision to free up capital for what SoftBank views as the next generation of AI investment. “It was nothing to do with Nvidia itself,” he said.
Investment Strategy And The AI Value Chain
By divesting from Nvidia, a company widely regarded as the leading supplier of AI training chips and hardware infrastructure, SoftBank is signalling that its focus is shifting upstream toward the companies that build and deploy AI models and platforms.
This move suggests SoftBank sees more value in controlling or capturing returns from the “application and ecosystem” layer of AI rather than the hardware layer.
The implication is that, in SoftBank’s view, the biggest opportunities lie where models meet users and enterprises, rather than solely in the pipeline of training chips.
The sale also comes amid broader questions about valuations across the AI hardware and infrastructure market.
Nvidia, having soared to a multitrillion-dollar market capitalization, has raised investor concerns around how much upside remains and whether returns justify current valuations.
Some analysts interpret SoftBank’s exit as a profit-taking move at a potential valuation peak.
Future Forward
SoftBank’s decision to exit its Nvidia position and deploy the capital into OpenAI reflects a clear directional bet: hardware is foundational but the real frontier lies in AI platforms and application ecosystems.
As the AI race progresses, this move may mark a pivotal inflection point in how major investors allocate capital across the value chain.
For SoftBank, the success of its OpenAI gamble will now define whether its repositioning was prescient or premature.
