SoftBank Reveals Stakes In Amazon, Alphabet, Netflix And Tesla

SoftBank has built a stake worth around $1.2 billion in Amazon, according to regulatory filings as reported by Reuters.

That comes alongside other stakes, filings show, in other noteworthy companies like Netflix, Alphabet, Microsoft and Tesla. And it has a stake in Nvidia, the chip supplier, for around $220 million. SoftBank is reportedly also in discussions about a sale of chip designer Arm, sources told Reuters.

The activity signals the tech conglomerate’s move away from its Vision Fund and toward funding other firms beyond unlisted startups. The company spent around $10 billion in buying shares, according to Reuters.

Many of the listed shares are seeing spikes in value as of late, with Tesla’s up 60 percent since the end of June, Reuters reported.

Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank, announced a new investment management subsidiary last week, which will be using excess cash from a massive asset sale program of liquid stocks, Reuters reported.

The Vision Fund, a $100 billion investment that focuses on smaller startups not yet gone public, has surged SoftBank’s earnings as the value of the group’s holdings have dropped below the price of acquisition.

SoftBank posted a loss of $18 billion in the aftermath of billionaire and Alibaba co-founder Jack Ma’s exit from the group’s board. Ma resigned officially as of June 25, right before the annual meeting of shareholders.

Part of the losses came from a $10 billion shortfall from the Vision Fund, amid recent widely-publicized investments in WeWork and Uber, although the company managed to invest a total of $75 billion during the fiscal year ending March 31, putting money into 88 startups. The startups were valued at a total of $69.6 billion.

SoftBank also lost $7.5 billion in other investments, which it attributed to the economic chaos of the pandemic, and at the same time, lost money on the bankruptcy of satellite operator OneWeb, which filed for bankruptcy in March.