AI stock boom delivers bumper quarter for Japan’s SoftBank

Japan’s SoftBank Group reported Tuesday that net profit more than doubled in the second quarter thanks to a boom in AI-related share prices that has fuelled fears of a market bubble.

The tech investment giant — a major backer of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI — logged a net profit of 2.5 trillion yen ($16.2 billion) in July-September, up from 1.2 trillion yen in the same period last year.

SoftBank also announced it sold $5.8 billion worth of shares in US chip giant Nvidia last month, after the quarter had ended.