Why Softbank sold its golden goose

In today’s episode on 17th November 2025, we talk about Softbank’s recent stake sale of Nvidia, and what it plans to do with the proceeds through the Vision Fund. Schedule your ⁠free consultation with Ditto's IRDAI-certified experts at no cost to you⁠ https://ditto.sh/vx51ji https://ditto.sh/vx51ji

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hello folks, you're tuned into Finshots Daily. In today's episode, we talk about SoftBank's recent stake sale of Nvidia and what it plans to do with the proceeds through the Vision Fund.

• 0:12Speaker 00

  Before we begin, here's a quick word from Team Ditto. Life can be unpredictable and if the main earner is not around, the bills won't stop. That's why term insurance is so important. It gives your family a fixed payout so they can cover school fees, EMIs and daily expenses without stress. If you buy it early, you can get a one crore cover for as little as thousand rupees a month and the premium stays the same for your entire policy term. That's real peace of mind at a very small cost. And if you're not sure which plan is right for you, book a free call with Ditto. No spam, just honest guidance. And we're trusted by over eight lakh people for their health and term insurance needs. Now, back to the story. Meet Masayoshi Son, the CEO of SoftBank.

• 0:57Speaker 00

  For years, he has been preaching of a new dawn. One he calls the AI singularity, a moment he believes will arrive within the next decade when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. That belief became the driving force behind SoftBank's Vision Fund. That's a hundred billion dollars fund that actively seeks out and invests in AI startups, ride hailing companies and food delivery businesses. Son's bold bets have made him one of the richest people in Asia and turned SoftBank into one of Japan's most influential and profitable companies. Now, when you're running a multi-billion dollar fund, naturally your eyes turn to the crown jewel of the AI boom, Nvidia.

• 1:39Speaker 00

  And for Masayoshi, it wasn't just a jewel, it was the keys to the empire. You see, he had invested in Nvidia in 2017, way before the stock rallied to the moon. Back then, GPUs were still a small corner of the semiconductor market and AI was just beginning to show some promise. But as the world caught on, Nvidia's values skyrocketed and SoftBank unfortunately exited too early. Even Nvidia CEO Chen Tsing-huang couldn't resist teasing Son about it at the Tokyo AI Summit in twenty twenty four joking that they could cry together about it. Because at one point, SoftBank was one among Nvidia's largest external shareholders. Now, to be fair, that regret is justified.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  In the past two years, Nvidia's valuation tripled, briefly hitting five trillion dollars this year. That made it the most valuable semiconductor company in history. Their GPUs are at the heart of generative AI revolution, powering everything from OpenAI's ChatGPT to Anthropic's Claude. So, for the Vision Fund, Nvidia was the perfect validation of Son's long-running bet on the AI singularity. And which better stock to hold than Nvidia? Its rise was the proof in the pudding. As Nvidia became the hardware engine behind the AI software boom, SoftBank made billions and, in every sense, it became the golden goose of the fund. Which is why what happened next confused the entire world.

• 3:04Speaker 00

  In its October quarterly filings, SoftBank revealed that it had sold its entire Nvidia stake, roughly five point eight billion dollars worth, locking in almost a twofold return on its investment. The announcement caught markets off guard and briefly pushed SoftBank's own shares into the red. After all, why would one of the loudest champions of AI cash out of the very stock driving the AI boom? For months, analysts and investors had been whispering about a potential AI bubble, and moves like this only fueled those debates. The numbers themselves seem almost surreal. Valuations in trillions, profit multiples that defy history, and an industry moving faster than it can keep up with demand.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  But it feels like they saw the public speculation from the Nvidia sale coming, which is why, in the same filing, SoftBank stated its plans on investing the gains back into other AI ventures, with one of them being OpenAI. But the irony in that is how OpenAI is one of Nvidia's biggest customers. That's what has investors scratching their heads. Capital and funding that leaves Nvidia somehow finding its way back. Which definitely begs the question, are we actually seeing an AI growth spurt? Or is it an echo chamber where every dollar invested circulates among the same few companies? Well, the simple answer is both yes and no. For SoftBank though, it has always been about the long game.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Eight years ago, when Eric Gunderson, then CEO of a little-known mapping startup called Mapbox, met Miyamoto Son, he expected to pitch his company. Instead, Son ended up pitching him on his plan to own a slice of every company touching the AI ecosystem, be it food, transport, finance, or medicine, because all of them were collecting data. And data, he argued, would become the new goldmine. Whoever owns the data owns the intelligence. That's where OpenAI's Stargate project comes in. A massive next-gen AI data center initiative reported to involve Oracle and projected by industry leaks to require investments on a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars. But a moonshot like that needs very deep pockets.

• 5:14Speaker 00

  And this is where SoftBank reenters the picture. Flushed with a quarterly profit of over $16 billion, it suddenly had the firepower to bankroll what might be the most ambitious infrastructure bet in AI history, and position itself as a primary financial backer. At the center of this effort sits Miyamoto Son, whose vision of the AI singularity is expanding beyond algorithms into the physical infrastructure that will power them. What began as a US-centered proposal is already global, with the first European site announced in Norway. Okay, but why do data centers need such astronomical budgets? Now, to answer that, we need to rethink what a data center is. You're probably picturing rows of towers in an air-conditioned server room

• 5:59Speaker 00

  with fans going on in the background. This is how the internet-era servers are built. But companies like OpenAI that run large language models need much more than today's servers can provide. Tens of thousands of Nvidia GPUs all link together to operate as a single unit. That kind of density demands enormous electricity, measured in gigawatts, equivalent to the power consumption of small cities. For context, with each of the five planned data centers, the initial plan of Stargate project will need 10 gigawatts of power in total, enough to run about 7 million homes. These GPUs also run hot, which means advanced liquid cooling is non-negotiable. That partly explains why Norway was chosen as the first Europeans target centre.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Naturally cooler temperatures and of course, a lower cost of electricity doesn't hurt, does it? There's another strategic layer here. Back in twenty four, China announced plans to build eight advanced computing hubs as a part of its eastern data-western computing strategy. By setting up data centres in the US and Europe, they're trying to train and keep the next AI boom within Western borders. But out of all these reasons, the most interesting is the future of AI itself. AGI or Artificial General Intelligence. Now, both Sun and Sam Altman are building data centres that can support workloads and no one fully understands yet. In short, they're future-proofing. And all of this fits neatly into SoftBank's focus on physical AI.

• 7:26Speaker 00

  Think robotics, data centres and the cloud infrastructure that links intelligence with the physical world. So, if you connect the dots, you will see that selling Nvidia didn't mean abandoning the golden goose. It was funding the farm. This was my associate's goal with the Vision Fund. Own pieces of the companies that are crucial to the AI-driven future. So, yes, it's more than just a financial pivot. In its latest quarterly filing, SoftBank described its new strategy as physical AI. Connecting intelligence with embodiment through robos, data centres and cloud systems. Of course, the irony that Stargate's construction will rely heavily on Nvidia's chips remains. The very company SoftBank exited will supply the silicon powering its next great ambition.

• 8:11Speaker 00

  But in the end, it perfectly captures this moment in AI history where the industry is so closely tied that even letting go of a golden goose can feel like feeding it from another hand. Folks, I will see you on the next one. Have a happy Monday. Thank you for listening to today's episode. And if you want to share your feedback or suggestions, do drop us an email to [email protected]. Until next time.