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SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son talked about SoftBank’s move to dump its Nvidia stake.
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He said the moves reflect an urgent need he saw to invest more in OpenAI.
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Son said he did not want to sell and wishes he could have held onto its Nvidia stock.
SoftBank kicked off November by making an announcement that shocked Wall Street and the tech world: the Japanese conglomerate had sold off its entire stake in Nvidia, a holding worth nearly $6 billion.
The news pushed Nvidia stock lower as investors took it as a bearish signal from a major tech investor. In comments at an event in Tokyo on Monday, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son addressed the move and said dumping shares of the top AI chipmaker was a painful decision.
Son said that he wishes SoftBank could have held onto its Nvidia stock, highlighting his respect for both the company and its CEO, Jensen Huang.
He also said that the move was spurred by what he saw as an urgent need to put more money to work with another top AI name: OpenAI.
“I respect Jensen, I respect Nvidia so much, I don’t want to sell a single share,” he said during the FII Priority Asia forum in Tokyo. “I just had more need for money to invest into OpenAI, invest into our opportunities, so I was crying to sell Nvidia shares. If I had more money, of course, I wanted to keep Nvidia shares, all the time, any time.”
SoftBank first invested in Nvidia in May 2017, taking a $4 billion stake in the chipmaker, years before the current AI boom began.
While Son said the decision was tough, it isn’t the first time SoftBank has trimmed its holdings of the hardware maker. The firm offloaded its Nvidia stake in 2019 for $3.3 billion, though it began building up a new one in 2020.
Since OpenAI ushered in the current era of AI with its launch of ChatGPT three years ago, SoftBank has invested heavily. In April 2025, it announced a plan to invest $40 billion into the AI startup, including a $22.5 billion payment by the end of 2025.
Son also said that SoftBank’s AI investment strategy is grounded in the belief that super intelligence is on the way, and when it arrives, it will drive at least 10% of global GDP growth. By his own estimate, it will require a cumulative investment of $10 trillion.
Read the original article on Business Insider