SoftBank's Major AI and Semiconductor Investments in 2025 and Beyond
By Anton Bridge
Overview of SoftBank's Recent AI and Semiconductor Investments
TOKYO, Sept 24 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group has raised $11.1 billion in the largest high-yield corporate bond sale globally on record to fund its investments in OpenAI and other artificial intelligence-related companies and infrastructure.
Founder and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son is aiming to establish SoftBank as the world's leading AI platform with investments across the semiconductor supply chain, data centres, large language model development and robotics.
Below are major AI investments that SoftBank has unveiled so far.
OpenAI
SoftBank's Growing Stake in OpenAI
SoftBank first invested $500 million in the ChatGPT maker in 2024 but soon increased its stake, putting in around $30 billion more in 2025 and committing to a further $30 billion in 2026, the final tranche of which is due to close next week. The investments will bring SoftBank's holding to around 13% of OpenAI's equity. In 2025 Son said he was "all in" on the firm.
Valuation and Public Listing Prospects
As of the end of June, OpenAI's rising valuation in private fundraising rounds had generated $45 billion in unrealised gains for SoftBank, though it has delayed plans for a public listing, holding up SoftBank's prospects of realising its gains and testing OpenAI in the public markets.
DigitalBridge
Acquisition and Strategic Value
SoftBank said it would acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge in December 2025 in a deal valued at $4 billion. The firm invests in digital infrastructure sectors like data centres, cell towers, fibre networks, small-cell systems and edge infrastructure and is among the investors in the Stargate data centre development scheme.
ABB's Robotics Business
Expansion into Robotics
In October 2025, SoftBank agreed to acquire the robotics business of Swiss engineering group ABB in a $5.4 billion deal. Son has touted robotics as a long-term growth prospect and earlier this year hired banks to explore the spinoff of its holdings in autonomous robotics which it calls Roze.
Intel
Equity Investment and Market Impact
On August 18, SoftBank unveiled a $2 billion equity investment in Intel, saying the deal reflected its belief that chip manufacturing and supply would expand further in the US - and that the American company would play a critical role.
Valuation Gains
The holding generated a valuation gain of 1.33 trillion yen ($8.39 billion) as Intel's shares surged in the three months that ended June this year.
Stargate
Joint Venture and Funding
Stargate is a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle. US President Donald Trump unveiled the project in January 2025, saying that the companies would invest up to $500 billion over four years.
Project Delays and Developments
In August 2025, SoftBank Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said the project, for which SoftBank is leading financing, had been delayed by longer-than-expected negotiations with other parties and decisions on sites.
SB Energy and Data Center Initiatives
As part of the initiative, in January SoftBank and OpenAI each invested $500 million in SB Energy, SoftBank's data centre development subsidiary, which is set to build and operate a 1.2-gigawatt OpenAI data center in Texas.
Perplexity AI
Investment in AI-Powered Search
The 4-year-old startup that operates an AI-powered search engine has had backing from investors including Nvidia and SoftBank. A report in The Information in August said Nvidia was planning a further funding round at a more than $30 billion valuation.
Ampere Computing
Acquisition of Chip Designer
SoftBank announced a $6.5 billion deal in March to acquire Ampere Computing, a US chip designer startup founded by the former president of Intel.
Arm-Based Data Center Chips
Ampere makes data centre central processing unit chips based on computing architecture from SoftBank's majority-owned Arm Holdings that are used by firms like Oracle in their cloud computing infrastructure.
Graphcore
Acquisition of British AI Chipmaker
In 2024, SoftBank bought the British AI chipmaker for an undisclosed sum.
Challenges and Market Position
Once touted as a rival to Nvidia, Graphcore had struggled to secure the investment needed to compete.
Arm Holdings
IPO and Market Value
The British chip designer owned by SoftBank went public in 2023, securing a valuation of $54.5 billion.
SoftBank's Stake and Market Impact
SoftBank still owns the majority of the company and its stake has surged in value along with a wider boom across the semiconductor supply chain, with the stake worth 36.8 trillion yen ($232.41 billion) in August 2026.
Arm-Based Devices and Data Center Chips
Arm-based devices power nearly every smartphone in the world and server chips based on its intellectual property have made significant inroads in the data centre market.
AI Data Center Chip Strategy
In March, Arm unveiled a new AI data center chip, which it said represented a change in its strategy as until then it had relied only on intellectual property for revenue, licensing its designs to chipmakers and receiving a royalty payment on chips sold.
Nvidia
SoftBank's Stake and Exit
SoftBank owned around 5% of Nvidia until it sold its stake in 2019, before ChatGPT generated a surge in AI interest at the end of 2022.
Reinvestment and Final Sale
It subsequently built up a position again but ultimately sold its $5.83 billion stake in the second half of 2025.
($1 = 158.4600 yen)
(Reporting by Anton Bridge; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)