Japan's SoftBank posts $7.8 bn annual net profit

Japanese tech investor SoftBank Group, a major player in the US Stargate artificial intelligence drive, on Tuesday posted a bumper full-year net profit of $7.8 billion.

The 1.15 trillion yen net profit for the 12 months to March 2025 was up from a net loss of 227 billion yen in the previous financial year.

The company's earnings often swing dramatically because it invests heavily in tech start-ups and semiconductor firms, whose share prices are volatile.

Tuesday's result marked its first full-year net profit since the 2020-21 financial year.

SoftBank Group has been actively investing in AI in recent years under its flamboyant founder and CEO Masayoshi Son.

He has repeatedly said "artificial superintelligence" will arrive in a decade -- bringing new inventions, medicine, knowledge and ways to invest.

The company is leading the $500 billion Stargate project to build AI infrastructure in the United States along with cloud giant Oracle and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

SoftBank Group and OpenAI announced in February that the Japanese giant would spend $3 billion annually to deploy OpenAI's technologies across its group companies.

SoftBank also said in March it had reached a deal to acquire US semiconductor firm Ampere for $6.5 billion, reinforcing its aggressive push into AI. The purchase is expected to close in the second half of the year.

The Japanese company is a majority shareholder in Arm Holdings, whose technology is used in 99 percent of smartphones.

Hideki Yasuda, an analyst at brokerage Toyo Securities, told AFP ahead of the announcement that he expected the firm to reveal strong figures.

"The market was not bad from January to March, so I think (the results) will land relatively well," he said.

"The market environment only worsened from the end of March to the beginning of April when the tariffs were announced," he said, referring to US President Donald Trump's multi-pronged free trade war.

"When AI first came out, it was mostly a dream and we couldn't do anything with it," Yasuda said. "But as of 2025, we are at the stage where it will be put to practical use, so the company is now investing in various businesses that are using AI."

Source: AFP