SOFTBANK’S $2B INTEL BET DELIVERS ¥1.33T QUARTERLY GAIN SoftBank’s April-June net profit fell 18% YoY to ¥347.3B, but still beat the ¥148.4B consensus. Total investment gains reached ¥1.85T, including a ¥1.33T gain on Intel after its shares more than tripled during the quarter. Vision Fund gains fell 65% to ¥255.7B, while OpenAI’s valuation remained unchanged. SoftBank has now committed more than $64B to OpenAI for a stake of around 13%. CFO Yoshimitsu Goto defended the investment, saying OpenAI retains an “overwhelming first-mover advantage” among consumers. SoftBank also plans to begin construction this year on its 10GW Ohio data center project and is in advanced talks with customers over long-term capacity leases. Goto dismissed AI overbuild concerns, pointing instead to an “overwhelming shortage” of computing capacity. Source: Nikkei Asia

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son dismissed AI bubble fears, comparing skeptics to early critics of cars and airplanes. He estimates it will take nearly $5 trillion in global investments annually to build out the necessary data centers, chips, and energy infrastructure for AI. Get the latest news on all things AI:

SoftBank has announced plans to invest up to €75 billion (around $87 billion) in AI data centers across France, making it the largest AI infrastructure investment ever announced in Europe. The project will create up to 5 gigawatts of AI computing capacity, with the first phase involving a €45 billion investment and several major data center sites in northern France. If completed as planned, it will be one of the largest AI data center developments in the world

SoftBank is starting a new company called Roze AI that will automate the construction of massive data centers using fleets of autonomous robots and AI-tech. Building data centers now takes too long and costs too much money, so Roze AI wants to fix that problem making them much faster and cheaper This idea comes from SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, who believes that the real future of AI lies in robots and physical buildings, not just computer programs. The company is already preparing for a U.S. IPO as soon as the second half of 2026, with internal targets pointing to a roughly $100 billion valuation