SoftBank sells all its NVIDIA shares and should invest in OpenAI

SoftBank confirmed this week that it zeroed out its investment in NVIDIA in October. The Japanese company sold the total of 32.1 million shares it had in the GeForce owner in exchange for a total of US$5.83 billion. The amount will be kept in investments for AI, with much of it going to OpenAI, says Reuters.

Apparently, SoftBank seeks to reverse its investments in AI from the component manufacturing segment with NVIDIA to offering services with OpenAI. Reuters also mentions negotiations to use part of the amount to finance the Stargate project, a new generation development for AI-based data centers, with also involvement from OpenAI and partnership with Oracle.

With NVIDIA’s hegemonic presence in the AI ​​market, the sale of shares by SoftBank will not alienate the companies. It is estimated that the Stargate project itself will need tens of billions of dollars in RTX accelerators – possibly Vera Rubin.

SoftBank and NVIDIA on a financial carousel

It is important to note that SoftBank’s divestment in NVIDIA also does not mean that the Japanese company is out of the lucrative AI hardware market. It owns 90% of Arm, which provides CPU cores for Grace Blackwell accelerators, for example.

In other words, SoftBank’s investments in services companies will result in purchases of NVIDIA accelerators, which in turn, in many cases, use Arm chips, which are from SoftBank.

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At the time we write this post, NVIDIA shares are falling, but it is difficult to assess whether this would be a reflection of Softbank’s decision. It is worth remembering that last week Michael Burry, famous for predicting the 2008 financial crisis, also called the AI ​​market a bubble, which could affect investors who trust the economist.

SoftBank, meanwhile, despite reallocating its investments, continues to be completely committed to the AI ​​market.

Via: Tom’s Hardware