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Note the first line:
> SoftBank said Tuesday it has sold its entire stake in U.S. chipmaker Nvidia for $5.83 billion as the Japanese giant looks to capitalize its “all in” bet on ChatGPT maker OpenAI.
They are switching gears, not exiting, folks.
I would have thought that the OpenAI bet is way more risky, because if someone comes along with a better model it could really hurt OpenAI. NVIDIA seems harder to dethrone imo.
As usual also "sold its entire stake" can be written as "investors eagerly bought SoftBank's entire stake of nvidia".
Also relevant:
> “This should not be seen, in our view, as a cautious or negative stance on Nvidia, but rather in the context of SoftBank needing at least $30.5bn of capital for investments in the Oct-Dec quarter, including $22.5bn for OpenAI and $6.5bn for Ampere
> That amounts to “more in a single quarter than it has invested in aggregate over the two prior years combined,” Bulk said.
> … Following the recapitalization and SoftBank’s $22.5 billion investment into the ChatGPT maker, the Japanese firm’s 4% ownership of OpenAI will increase to 11%.
It sounds like Nvidia was played out for them and they’re aggressively trying to get in on OpenAI so they can exit sometime after retail investors get in
Selling the _entire_ stake sounds really aggressive though? Is that normal?
Even if you're all-in on OpenAI, does it not make financial sense to have _some_ stake in Nvidia considering they are the only ones with an actual moat?
Unless there are CUDA alternative breakthroughs we will hear about in the next few days.
They recognise that the larger bubble is in the datacenters.
Most of the hardware we are using was designed for computer graphics not AI. Now that China isn't buying Nvidia any longer and actively trying to get their own companies to produce hardware, what happens to all these datacenters when a company produces a device that has 80% of the performance of the current Nvidia hardware but 20% of its power consumption?
Should we just take them at their word? All we know is that they sold all of their Nvidia.
lol, after wework you'd be an idiot to think it was nothing more than shilling their "winner" to potentially dump on the public. but i guess as long as you can make money on the way up.
Maybe they're trying to bail out OpenAI, but that's still not close to the amount they would need to do that. OpenAI needs like 1.3 trillion dollars.
But they didn't think the Nvidia stake would make more $ otherwise they would still retain a percentage, right?
So averaging up then? That's even worse. More like degeneracy and gambling.
the key is "looks to"
Softbank can also choose not to.
Softbank is involved with Lutnick's Cantor & Fitzgerald in crypto deals:
https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/cantor-nears-...
Masayoshi Son is BFF with Trump and Lutnick:
https://asia.nikkei.com/politics/international-relations/how...
There is more going on here than is publicly known. Investing in hot air is of course a specialty of the Trump admin.
They don't see upside in Nvidia clearly or they wouldn't have completely sold out. If they don't think the risk/reward is worth it why should anyone else? Eventually you'll run out of greater fools.
There is no craziness here. It's a "Value rotation". Sell high, buy low, repeat. Capture a higher rate of return.
OpenAI just completed separating it's non-profit and for-profit restructuring: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/open-ai-for-profit-microsoft...
This probably means the for-profit structure will be going public in 2026, and there is probably a last private round happening.
> Sell high, buy low, repeat.
Softbank is known for doing it the other way around...
Clearly they don't see upside in Nvidia, the stock single handedly keeping this bubble intact, nothing to worry about of coarse.
I personally wouldn’t put much value on this event. I’ve never been impressed by SoftBank’s investment decisions. Of course, it has a good amount of money. But its decisions on ARM, WeWork, etc., have made it seem like it’s just (uninformed/underinformed) gambling.
ARM turned out to be a good investment for them, but I think overall you're right. They haven't really done any better than index funds (as is usual).
It looks more like a strategic reallocation than a panic exit. Nvidia has already delivered outsized returns, while OpenAI represents a leveraged bet on the next layer of the AI stack - software and services rather than hardware. SoftBank probably sees more upside (and influence) there, even if the risk is higher
Makes no sense to sell their entire position on a key infrastructure player, if you’re going all in on ai. That’s very odd.
It makes sense when you know the semi industry has always been cyclical and this insane level of spending can't be fueled on debt and VC cash forever. Masayoshison is out and now your 401ks are holding the bag, he'll get one last cashout when Open"AI" IPOs too with his winnings.
"Makes no sense" is basically SoftBank's motto though.
In the game of musical chairs, there is no official moment when players need to get in position to reach the closest chair. One second there is music and another second later there isn't. However, the that period exists if you can look at the relevant signs: the host hand and body in relation to the music record player.
No AI player will admit to be positioning for a sector collapse but it would be naïve to believe that anyone close to ground zero isn't planning contingency plans and are just coasting in the golden age of AI. And those who have the most skin in the game are certainly the ones most incentivise to do so while denying their true intentions.
LLMs are going no where but the reality of them not being the civilisation shifting money makers people have hyped them up to be is undeniably setting no matter what the AI astroturfers hiding in HN tell you. People have been jumping off the train or positioning to reach the closest chair when the music stops. Not long ago 2023, the world bubble was just whispered here. 2 years later it has hit mainstream and has been uttered by people holding the money bags. It might be a dream or it might not.
The difference is that, if you were in denial, now you are seeing signs that are much harder to deny. And we should expect the upcoming signs to be harder and harder, until the number of people denying reaches to zero right as the bubble fully bursts and the AI startups layoffs begin.
By low, sell high. Any Nvidia shareholders would be foolish not to sell at least part of their holdings right now. Don’t ride the bubble to the bottom.
> SoftBank Vision Fund recorded a $3.3 billion return on its Nvidia investment. The fund's February 2019 closeout of its Nvidia position preceded the AI boom and Nvidia's rapid transformation into one of the world's most valuable companies.
Masayoshi Son has form when it comes to calling the top of the market with this particular company.
It’s difficult to imagine them generating enough profit to support their current valuations.
The surprising thing to me here is that $5.83B was their entire stake, after NVDA had gone up more that 1000% in the the last 5 years.
I sold third at 180. I have seen it happen so many times in 50 years. You sit on your pile of gold and just watch it slowly disappear.
But also selling ALL is a bad move, says one who sold all of Nokia at 1000 markka in 1996.
Good point to cash out in my opinion. Extremely likely you can buy NVDA back cheaper in the future.
This should be the news of the day, or even should I say, the news of the last 3 years.
The bubble is starting to crack.
If virtualization and cloud computing has shown us anything, it's that software is more profitable than hardware.
The question is: now that Nvidia is the new Intel, is OpenAI the new Microsoft?
Softbank clearly thinks so.
Probably not bad move. How much upside Nvidia has left? And on other side how much can it go down? At point when you do not see them moving much more up selling is the logical conclusion.
Fun thought experiment: If a company had a product with infinite value it would be irrational to allocate capital to shares since you could own the product instead. So the share price might even go down (it's hard to know what role money will play in a post-agi society).
A smaller scale version of this might be happening here. Or it could be a bubble. Either way it's interesting!
I have a LOT of respect for Masayoshi Son. He is the ONLY billionaire on the planet who spends like there is a wealth tax. I wish governments would observe him and eventually impose a wealth tax. It would do everyone a world of good.
"All in on OpenAI"
Hahah! Fucking hell, openai is going to fail big time, they have nearly a 1,5 TRILLION USD in debt. There is no way they can handle that, their only option is to cozy up with trumo and make the tax payers pay for all that.
Baka
Softbank has underperformed massively. Also they sold again their total stake in 2019. Why is it front news? To feed the AI bubble talk.
We will find out in next few months but I predict they had a great exit at the high. As the AI bubble seems to be deflating even if not popping with the largest economy in the world insulating itself from western tech and AI.
AI is a gold rush.
Nvidia is the leading shovel maker.
...
I don't understand the rationale here.
Totally not a bubble [0], Move along now, nothing to see here. /s
Well the news should probably be "sold its entire stake", as in it's already over and done.
I wonder if there are people (with money) who have a really good grasp on this market (hardware I mean). For example you could have sold NVDA in August, not much lower than current price, and bought SNDK and 5x-ed your money in 3 months.
They're selling a public asset to the mainstreet dummy, so they can pour money on the AI fire so OpenAI can build more datacenters. This is another vein of circular funding, they're getting their cash from our retirement accounts via institutional investments and index funds.
I was a skeptic in AI crapware, but if SoftBank is selling Nvidia to the moon is almost a guarantee
I'm sorry, why is this on Hacker News?
I'm on investing subreddits all the time, and I'd expect it there.
But I don't see how this is "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
If there wasn't an AI bubble narrative, then sure, this this would gratify my curiousity. But now I don't see it, not even in the most charitable way.
I'm curious what the line of thinking is on how this does, in some way, gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.
Edit: I figured that I'd get all the downvotes. I've been here long enough to understand the social dynamics of the site. Funnily enough, I was more in the "Hacker News" demographic between 2015 and 2023. Since then, it has shifted a little. Nowadays, I have to force myself a bit to sound more positive than I actually am in order for my comments to be appreciated (in terms of upvotes, as I do view that as a form of social feedback), and that is fine.
I understand that this post gives bad vibes or sounds perhaps a bit mean? I am not intending it that way. I really just don't get it. Look at my comment history, I sometimes ask questions like this, but not that often. I suspect I'm not the only one in this.