軟銀出售價值58億美元的英偉達股份，用於支付OpenAI相關交易

Recently the New York Times reported the following:

SoftBank Sells $5.8 Billion Stake in Nvidia to Pay for OpenAI Deals

The move has further stoked concerns among some investors that the rally in artificial intelligence stocks was overdone.

The NYT - By Michael J. de la Merced

Nov. 11, 2025

SoftBank, the Japanese technology giant, has staked its future on artificial intelligence.

But to help pay for those expensive investments, the company last month sold its entire $5.8 billion holdings in Nvidia, the chipmaker behind the A.I. boom, SoftBank said in its quarterly earnings report on Tuesday.

SoftBank’s enormous spending plans, including some $30 billion alone on OpenAI, come amid a flood of planned investments in artificial intelligence across the technology industry — including circular deals among the same companies. (Nvidia, for example, is committed to investing up to $100 billion in OpenAI, which in turn plans to buy an enormous slug of the chipmaker’s processors.)

News that SoftBank, an influential technology investor, was getting out of one of the biggest names in artificial intelligence stoked concern among some investors that the rally in A.I. stocks was overdone. A new skeptic of the boom appeared on Monday: Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager made famous by the book and the movie “The Big Short,” questioned on social media the accounting for tech giants’ huge purchases of computer chips.

But SoftBank’s reason for the sale was purely pragmatic, according to its chief financial officer, Yoshimitsu Goto. “We do need to divest our existing portfolio so that, that can be utilized for our financing,” he told analysts. “It’s nothing to do with Nvidia itself.”

Late last month, OpenAI completed a corporate reorganization to become a for-profit company. As part of that move, SoftBank agreed to make its full $30 billion investment in the ChatGPT maker.

The move underscored the steep financial requirements of SoftBank’s continuing focus on artificial intelligence. “I want SoftBank to lead the A.I. revolution,” Masayoshi Son, the company’s founder and chief executive, said in 2023.

That has meant making big pledges, including the OpenAI investment, and joining a venture called Stargate, with OpenAI and Oracle, that intends to build an array of data centers.

More broadly, SoftBank has announced that it plans to invest $100 billion in projects in the United States.

Doing so has forced the company to find the money for its pledges, including by selling off existing investments and borrowing heavily.

In some cases, however, those investments have paid off already. Despite the price tag of the OpenAI commitment, the start-up’s soaring valuation — on paper, at least — helped SoftBank more than double its profit in the most recent quarter, to 2.5 trillion yen, or $16.2 billion.

But SoftBank’s sale of its Nvidia stake resurrected memories of its last investment in the chipmaker, which it sold off in 2019. That was a few years before its stock began to climb on the back of demand for A.I. services like ChatGPT.

Translation

軟銀出售價值58億美元的英偉達股份，用於支付OpenAI相關交易

此舉進一步加劇了部分投資人對人工智能股票漲勢過猛的擔憂。

日本科技巨頭軟銀已將未來押注於人工智能領域。

軟銀在周二發布的季度財報中表示, 為了支付這些高昂的投資，軟銀上個月出售了其持有的全部共值58億美元的英偉達股份。英偉達是人工智能熱潮背後的晶片製造商。

軟銀的巨額支出計劃，光是對OpenAI一項就高達300億美元，正值整個科技業紛紛計劃投資人工智能之際 - 包括同一公司之間的循環交易。 （例如，英偉達承諾向OpenAI投資高達1000億美元，而OpenAI則計劃購買這家晶片製造商的大量處理器。）

軟銀這個具有影響力的科技投資者，正要離開人工智能領域中最具名氣的公司之一的消息，引發了一些投資者的擔憂，他們認為人工智能股票的漲勢可能過熱了。週一又出現了一位對這波熱潮持懷疑態度的人：因《The Big Short》一書和電影而聲名鵲起的對沖基金經理Michael Burry在社交媒體上質疑科技巨頭大規模購買電腦晶片的會計處理。

但據軟銀財務長Yoshimitsu Goto稱，軟銀出售英偉達的理由純粹出於務實考量。他告訴分析師們稱: “我們確實需要剝離現有投資組合，以便將它用於融資”; “這與英偉達本身無關。”

上月底，OpenAI完成了公司重組，成為一家營利性公司。作為該舉措的一部分，軟銀同意向ChatGPT開發商OpenAI全額投資300億美元。

此舉凸顯了軟銀持續專注於人工智能領域所需的巨額資金。公司創辦人兼執行長孫正義在2023年表示: 「我希望軟銀帶領人工智能革命」。

這意味著要做出巨額投資承諾，包括對OpenAI的投資，以及與OpenAI和甲骨文共同成立名為Stargate的合資企業，該合資企業旨在建立一系列數據中心。

更廣泛地說，軟銀已宣布計劃在美國投資1,000億美元用於相關項目。

這樣做迫使該公司必須籌集資金來履行其投資承諾，包括出售現有投資和大量舉債。

然而，在某些情況下，那些投資已經獲得了回報。儘管投資 OpenAI 的代價不菲，但這家新創公司飆升的估值 - 至少帳面上如此 - 幫助軟銀在最近一個季度實現了超過一倍的利潤，達到 2.5 兆日元，約合 162 億美元。

然而，軟銀出售其持有的英偉達股份，卻讓人回想起它上次投資這家晶片製造商的經歷。軟銀上次出售英偉達股票是在 2019 年，那是距離英偉達股價開始因為 ChatGPT 等人工智能服務的需求而攀升還有幾年。

So, SoftBank has staked its future on artificial intelligence. I am wondering how long will this AI boom last as all major AI companies are rushing to build data centers.