SoftBank sold all its Nvidia shares, with the decision of its founder Masayoshi Son, who did not give up taking risks despite his turbulent past. The company divested 32.1 million Nvidia shares worth $5.8 billion. This step is considered as part of a new decision taken by Son to allocate more resources to artificial intelligence investments. While Nvidia shares lost approximately 3 percent of their value after the sale, analysts emphasized that this decision was due to SoftBank’s need for capital rather than a negative attitude towards Nvidia.
Masayoshi Son is a figure known for the extraordinary investments he made in the past. Son, who increased his wealth to 78 billion dollars during the “dot-com” bubble in the early 2000s, lost 70 billion dollars when the bubble burst, becoming the person who suffered the largest individual financial loss in history. However, the $20 million investment it made in Alibaba in the same period enabled it to compensate for this loss, reaching a value of $150 billion over the years.
SoftBank also faced severe consequences for Son’s decisions
Son’s big investments sometimes led to big losses. While the investments made in Uber resulted in a loss on paper for a long time, the WeWork disaster brought a total loss of 13.7 billion dollars to SoftBank. Son is known to have supported WeWork’s unrealistic valuations and continued investments despite warnings from his employees, due to his trust in the company’s founder, Adam Neumann. The company’s failure in the IPO process and subsequent loss of value had severe consequences for SoftBank.
Now all eyes are on Son’s new goals. SoftBank plans to transfer the resources it obtained by selling Nvidia shares to a partnership with OpenAI that could potentially reach $30 billion and a $1 trillion artificial intelligence production center planned to be established in Arizona, USA. Although these projects are still in the planning phase, it is noteworthy that Son again directs all his resources to high-risk technological initiatives.
Although SoftBank received proceeds from the sale at only 14 percent below Nvidia’s peak price, it was the company’s second full exit from Nvidia. In 2019, SoftBank sold its $4 billion Nvidia shares for $3.6 billion. The current value of these shares sold at that time exceeds 150 billion dollars. This table reveals how Son’s timing can have complex consequences for investors.
Despite this, analysts do not see this sale by SoftBank as a negative signal about Nvidia’s future. On the contrary, this move is considered as a search for resource creation to meet the growing capital need in the field of artificial intelligence. But still, Masayoshi Son’s vision and courage always continue to raise questions in the markets. Investors are carefully watching what to expect this time, especially considering the consequences of Son’s risky decisions in the past.