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Investing.com-- Softbank Group Corp. (TYO:9984) booked a stronger-than-expected annual net income on Tuesday, as increasing hype over artificial intelligence drove up the value of its key tech holdings in the past year.
{{0|Softbank} } posted a net income attributable of 1.15 trillion yen ($7.8 billion) for the year to March 31, much higher than Bloomberg estimates of 709.69 billion yen. Softbank also swung to an annual profit from a 227.65 billion yen loss in the prior year.
Softbank’s net sales rose 7.2% to 7.243 trillion yen for the year.
For the three months to March 31, Softbank reported a net profit of 517 billion yen ($3.49 billion), which was stronger than Reuters expectations for a modest loss of 26.9 billion yen. Its performance through the quarter was boosted chiefly by strength in its telecom units, which helped offset a decline in tech valuations in the first three months of 2025.
The tech investment conglomerate logged a 3.70 trillion yen gain on its investments through the past year, as increasing optimism over artificial intelligence drove up tech valuations across the board.
Of this, its annual gain on investment at its flagship Vision Funds was 387.58 billion yen, boosted by its holdings in Coupang Inc, DiDi Global, and ByteDance. But this was offset by investment losses on AutoStore and Symbotic Inc (NASDAQ:SYM), which saw its Vision Fund 2 clock an overall investment loss.
Softbank has leaned heavily into investing in artificial intelligence infrastructure and chips over the past two years, having recently acquired U.S. chipmaker Ampere for $6.5 billion.
The company also earlier this year announced a $500 billion project with OpenAI- called Project Stargate- to build more AI infrastructure in the United States.