Japanese holding company SoftBank (SFTBY) sold its entire stakes in U.S. chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) and wireless provider T-Mobile (TMUS) during October.
SoftBank, which runs the venture capital fund called “Vision Fund,” netted proceeds of $5.83 billion U.S. from the sale of 32.1 million Nvidia shares.
The Japanese investment firm earned $9.17 billion U.S. from the sale of its stake in T-Mobile.
The big stock sales come as SoftBank looks to raise cash and capitalize on its bet on ChatGPT maker OpenAI, a position the Japanese firm plans to grow over time.
This is not the first time SoftBank has cashed out of a position in Nvidia. The Vision Fund was an early backer of Nvidia, amassing a $4 billion U.S. stake by 2017.
However, SoftBank sold its entire holdings of Nvidia in January 2019 before buying back the stock.
Tokyo-based SoftBank remains involved in several artificial intelligence (A.I.) ventures that rely on Nvidia’s microchips, including the $500 billion U.S. Stargate project for U.S. data centres.
The Vision Fund is aggressively investing in A.I., acquiring firms throughout the technology’s value chain from chips to data centres and large language models.
The sales of the Nvidia and T-Mobile stakes helped SoftBank record a $19 billion U.S. gain in this year’s third quarter.
SFTBY stock has risen 150% this year to trade at $72.40 U.S. per share.
