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SoftBank sells its entire stake in Nvidia
- solumunus 1y agoGood point to cash out in my opinion. Extremely likely you can buy NVDA back cheaper in the future.
- fnands 1y agoMaybe. Could go up still, but a surprisingly conservative move for SoftBank. But hey, maybe the market crashes tomorrow and this is seen as the best piece of timing ever seen, maybe it doubles in the next year. In any case, you never lose by taking profit.
- lazide 1y agoSoftbank is likely in trouble and needs the cash or something.
- reconnecting 1y agoSoftBank, according to its stock, is in the best shape ever. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SFTBY/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/SFTBY/
- coffeebeqn 1y agoInteresting - is buying SoftBank a proxy for owning some OpenAI at this point ?
- ares623 1y agoI thought Nvidia was the proxy!
- throwaway290 1y agoIt's proxies all the way down
- reconnecting 1y ago... to reverse proxy
- lazide 1y agoAnd per the stock prices Tesla is worth more than every other car manufacturer ever, as well. Until it wasn’t. Then it was again. Either way, cash flow != stock price, not that SoftBank is in a ‘business’ that likely needs a lot of cash. Maybe they just needed a new yacht? Or need to bail out one of their investments?
- solumunus 1y agoI’m not calling the top, but I think it’s incredibly likely we’ll see NVDA with a lower market cap than this in the next 3 years.
- reconnecting 1y ago$5.83B is too large to be a round trip. This is clearly an exit.
- csomar 1y agoNvidia current market cap is 4.84 trillion dollars. Yes, that's roughly 5 trillions of dollars. 5.83B is a rounding error.
- reconnecting 1y agoIn numbers, yes, a rounding error. In fact, SoftBank was one of Nvidia's backers, and whatever this sell means in the stock markets, this is a strong signal.
- nromiun 1y agoMarket capitalization is not equal to real money. Take a look at how Elon Musk bought Twitter.
- oezi 11mo agoDaily trading volume is roughly 200m units at roughly 200 USD per stock which equals 40bn in daily trades. So 5bn isn't nothing but over the course of a month it isn't particularly much.
- nromiun 11mo ago5 billion is massive. So much of that 40bn daily volume is just leverage. Sort of like the derivatives market, trillions of dollars in volume but nobody has that much money, it is just margin. So even if some trading firm losses 1-2 billion everyone panics and goes out of the market. It actually happened during the flash crash. Also, I highly doubt they sold those 5bn of shares in any exchange. Most likely they did it over several weeks on a dark pool. Because again 5bn is massive and it would cause a crash in any open exchange.
- sixeyes 1y ago
- drstewart 1y ago[flagged]
- vntok 1y agoWhy are you assuming people around you automatically have the means and desire to invest their own money into risky financial instruments? This is so weird.
- drstewart 1y agoRisky? He said it's EXTREMELY likely. There's little risk. Margin loans are available.
- charcircuit 1y ago>Margin loans are available. He can still be margin called even just due to volatility in the market.
- piva00 1y agoIt can be both, likely and risky, timing the market is one of the riskiest things one can do... It's likely there will be another major stock market crash, it's part of the cycle, and will always happen in its current form, good luck finding a way to time it and make a huge profit though.
- drstewart 1y agoBold prediction, saying something might happen some time at some point in the future maybe but nobody knows when.
- piva00 1y agoIsn't that how financial predictions work? No one knows, it's always a gamble, if it wasn't by definition it would have happened earlier. Not sure why people get so up in arms about it, signs can be seen but the timing is always the impossible thing to predict.
- reconnecting 1y agoThis should be the news of the day, or even should I say, the news of the last 3 years. The bubble is starting to crack.
- dude250711 1y agoA highly-useful autocomplete with a tricky monetization.
- Tuna-Fish 1y agoSoftBank selling their stake in the AI shovel company to put it all directly in the AI gold rush company is evidence of bubble starting to crack?
- chongli 1y agoApparently this is in the wake of OpenAI pivoting to a consumer-facing ad business, away from trying to disrupt every white collar worker on the planet. I would say that still points to a bubble beginning to pop.
- netdevphoenix 1y ago> to put it all directly in the AI gold rush company There are 3 facts here: 1. Softbank's nvidia stake sale has happened 2. Softbank has not put it all directly into the AI gold rush 3. 2 other investment entities have also sold most/all their stake in Nvidia Do what these 3 facts as you will but these are ripples in the surface of the tech world
- janalsncm 11mo agoWhat are these two other entities?
- netdevphoenix 11mo agoCurbstone and Druckenmiller are the noteworthy ones from outsiders. Several Nvidia executives sold millions of their stock (possibly the world's most valuable stock) in the first half of the year and also sold millions of their nvidia stock last year which is roughly when most agreed that OpenAI was not likely to deliver anything groundbreaking anymore from their current transformer tech. The Gpt-5 release just confirmed what most knew. And we know that the best time to leave is when the market can still get slightly hotter.
- Lionga 1y agoI was a skeptic in AI crapware, but if SoftBank is selling Nvidia to the moon is almost a guarantee
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mettamage 1y agoI'm sorry, why is this on Hacker News? I'm on investing subreddits all the time, and I'd expect it there. But I don't see how this is "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." If there wasn't an AI bubble narrative, then sure, this this would gratify my curiousity. But now I don't see it, not even in the most charitable way. I'm curious what the line of thinking is on how this does, in some way, gratifies one's intellectual curiosity. Edit: I figured that I'd get all the downvotes. I've been here long enough to understand the social dynamics of the site. Funnily enough, I was more in the "Hacker News" demographic between 2015 and 2023. Since then, it has shifted a little. Nowadays, I have to force myself a bit to sound more positive than I actually am in order for my comments to be appreciated (in terms of upvotes, as I do view that as a form of social feedback), and that is fine. I understand that this post gives bad vibes or sounds perhaps a bit mean? I am not intending it that way. I really just don't get it. Look at my comment history, I sometimes ask questions like this, but not that often. I suspect I'm not the only one in this.
- Festro 1y agoThere is an AI bubble narrative, people are curious when it will burst. This is an indicator that people will want to analyse, discuss, and think about (intellectually).
- mettamage 1y agoI see. I guess I simply think that Softbank isn't a good indicator for that. To me, they don't seem better than any other investment company that puts their money into technology stocks with a growth narrative. For example, they invested in WeWork and FTX. They don't know the future, just like the rest of us. If we're talking indicators, if 5 Softbanks would do it in rapid succession one after another it just mentions to me that the "smart money" is showing signs of moving out. In terms of whether AI will or will not fuel growth, I think it will fuel growth. Self-driving cars seems to be a solved problem for cities at least fairly soon (e.g. Waymo, anti-example: Tesla, camera's is not the way). It's a question whether LLMs state of the art models will grow more, but what hasn't been done that well yet is integrating it into current software. I know, because in part, that's my job. There's still a huge productivity unlock there, also in ways that people can't fully imagine. Right now, LLMs seem to be an enabler for software engineers, especially software engineers on smaller projects (I can't find the research at the moment, it was a while ago that I read it). It seems to be an enabler for many people, but they do need to put time into prompting it in a way that works for them. Fixing the context window issues and others I think will be really hard tasks, because I suspect we then need to know what goes on inside the black box. If an LLM could continuously learn, so somehow continuously keep updating its weights such that it learns better, that would be a breakthrough.
- lifthrasiir 1y agoNote the first line: > SoftBank said Tuesday it has sold its entire stake in U.S. chipmaker Nvidia for $5.83 billion as the Japanese giant looks to capitalize its “all in” bet on ChatGPT maker OpenAI. They are switching gears, not exiting, folks.
- est 1y agothe key is "looks to" Softbank can also choose not to.
- zerosizedweasle 1y agoMaybe they're trying to bail out OpenAI, but that's still not close to the amount they would need to do that. OpenAI needs like 1.3 trillion dollars.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ares623 1y agoSelling the _entire_ stake sounds really aggressive though? Is that normal? Even if you're all-in on OpenAI, does it not make financial sense to have _some_ stake in Nvidia considering they are the only ones with an actual moat? Unless there are CUDA alternative breakthroughs we will hear about in the next few days.
- l5870uoo9y 1y agoIsn't it merely a matter of time before China has an alternative?
- viraptor 1y agoThey don't even need to invent anything. Just put in some work to polish what already exists: https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA https://github.com/vosen/ZLUDA
- spwa4 1y agoWell the news should probably be "sold its entire stake", as in it's already over and done.
- rvz 1y agoTotally not a bubble [0], Move along now, nothing to see here. /s [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45795158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45795158
- xbmcuser 1y agoWe will find out in next few months but I predict they had a great exit at the high. As the AI bubble seems to be deflating even if not popping with the largest economy in the world insulating itself from western tech and AI.
- blitzar 1y ago> SoftBank Vision Fund recorded a $3.3 billion return on its Nvidia investment. The fund's February 2019 closeout of its Nvidia position preceded the AI boom and Nvidia's rapid transformation into one of the world's most valuable companies. Masayoshi Son has form when it comes to calling the top of the market with this particular company.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ljlolel 1y agoLast top was 2022
- ares623 1y agoRelated? https://www.marketbeat.com/instant-alerts/filing-curbstone-financial-management-corp-sells-49858-shares-of-nvidia-corporation-nvda-2025-11-11/ https://www.marketbeat.com/instant-alerts/filing-curbstone-f... https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/11/11/billionaire-stanley-druckenmiller-sold-nvidia-pltr/ https://www.fool.com/investing/2025/11/11/billionaire-stanle...
- golbez9 1y agoAnd all this on a holiday when the markets are closed....
- unit149 1y ago[dead]
- GBeastMode 1y agoIt looks more like a strategic reallocation than a panic exit. Nvidia has already delivered outsized returns, while OpenAI represents a leveraged bet on the next layer of the AI stack - software and services rather than hardware. SoftBank probably sees more upside (and influence) there, even if the risk is higher
- rdsubhas 1y agoThere is no craziness here. It's a "Value rotation". Sell high, buy low, repeat. Capture a higher rate of return. OpenAI just completed separating it's non-profit and for-profit restructuring: https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/open-ai-for-profit-microsoft.html https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/28/open-ai-for-profit-microsoft... This probably means the for-profit structure will be going public in 2026, and there is probably a last private round happening.
- tasuki 1y ago> Sell high, buy low, repeat. Softbank is known for doing it the other way around...
- diamond559 11mo agoClearly they don't see upside in Nvidia, the stock single handedly keeping this bubble intact, nothing to worry about of coarse.
- AnonC 1y agoI personally wouldn’t put much value on this event. I’ve never been impressed by SoftBank’s investment decisions. Of course, it has a good amount of money. But its decisions on ARM, WeWork, etc., have made it seem like it’s just (uninformed/underinformed) gambling.
- IshKebab 11mo agoARM turned out to be a good investment for them, but I think overall you're right. They haven't really done any better than index funds (as is usual).
- consumer451 1y agoThe surprising thing to me here is that $5.83B was their entire stake, after NVDA had gone up more that 1000% in the the last 5 years.
- yugioh3 11mo agoyeah it made me wonder what all this fuss is about. perhaps im numb to big numbers now. but $6b is a miniscule fraction of NVDA.
- consumer451 11mo agoMy main thought was "how bad is Softbank at their job to have only been in on NVDA for such a paltry sum?" Really living up their reputation? Or, am I way off-base here? I am just an outside observer and I would love to be educated. Did it makes sense for Softbank to be in so little on the company "selling shovels" to all their "gold mining" investments?
- roncesvalles 11mo agoOr, how down bad is Softbank that it needs to sell its NVDA stake to raise $6B?
- consumer451 11mo agoSomeone needs to put this guy/team in an asylum, for the betterment of the country of Japan. Microsoft (which has >50B into OpenAI)->Anthropic for biz use cases Softbank->OpenAI. Yet again, the dumbest money ever? There are many, far worse Softbank fails. How does this keep happening? Who is advising this team? I am available. 80% sure that I could do better. I just genuinely hate to see capital being destroyed like this.
- al_be_back 1y agoMakes no sense to sell their entire position on a key infrastructure player, if you’re going all in on ai. That’s very odd.
- brk 11mo ago"Makes no sense" is basically SoftBank's motto though.
- diamond559 11mo agoIt makes sense when you know the semi industry has always been cyclical and this insane level of spending can't be fueled on debt and VC cash forever. Masayoshison is out and now your 401ks are holding the bag, he'll get one last cashout when Open"AI" IPOs too with his winnings.
- fancyfredbot 1y agoFun thought experiment: If a company had a product with infinite value it would be irrational to allocate capital to shares since you could own the product instead. So the share price might even go down (it's hard to know what role money will play in a post-agi society). A smaller scale version of this might be happening here. Or it could be a bubble. Either way it's interesting!
- hyperadvanced 11mo agoObviously we’re not ever going to see “infinite value”. I think it’s instructive to think of this on the margin or in terms of limits: would a putative AGI have an inflection point at which more of it produces less value, and even if it’s productive capacity were high, it could not be “infinitely high” (which would make it an economic absurdity). Additionally, for the AGI producer (or platform host), there would have to be some way of price function that would cover the costs of operating or providing the AGI service. Thus, a more realistic look at this is “purchasers of AGI would have no reason to purchase “more” of it beyond a certain threshold, after which it is no longer useful to their ends, however purchasing shares of the AGI producer would expose them to value from new customers who could use it better”
- JCM9 1y agoBy low, sell high. Any Nvidia shareholders would be foolish not to sell at least part of their holdings right now. Don’t ride the bubble to the bottom.
- AnimalMuppet 11mo agoWhen money is growing on trees, pick it. (That doesn't necessarily mean sell it all. But HODL can get you broke. It's prudent to take some juicy gains while they're available.)
- CamperBob2 11mo agoYou could make a lot of money, historically, by taking positions in opposition to Softbank.
- Ekaros 1y agoProbably not bad move. How much upside Nvidia has left? And on other side how much can it go down? At point when you do not see them moving much more up selling is the logical conclusion.
- timonoko 1y agoI sold third at 180. I have seen it happen so many times in 50 years. You sit on your pile of gold and just watch it slowly disappear. But also selling ALL is a bad move, says one who sold all of Nokia at 1000 markka in 1996.
- rchaud 11mo agoYou're thinking like a lowly retail investor who can only spend his own money. Softbank spends other people's money. They have to show some profits now and then to make their financials look good and thereby attract more funding.
- cforcybertruck 1y agoIf virtualization and cloud computing has shown us anything, it's that software is more profitable than hardware. The question is: now that Nvidia is the new Intel, is OpenAI the new Microsoft? Softbank clearly thinks so.
- phplovesong 1y ago"All in on OpenAI" Hahah! Fucking hell, openai is going to fail big time, they have nearly a 1,5 TRILLION USD in debt. There is no way they can handle that, their only option is to cozy up with trumo and make the tax payers pay for all that.
- fennecfoxy 1y agoAh, because you didn't post any sort of source I looked it up. Seems your 1.5Tn figure is in "spending commitments" and not current/hard debts. I.e. budget earmarked for datacenters and research from '25-'35 or so.
- phplovesong 11mo agoYup. They have minted deals to spend, and im pretty sure there is a hefty fine if they cant pay or do indeed backtrack from the deal. Either way OpenAI is operating in a completely absurd way, and is no where near worth what they claim. Kinda lika Tesla is.
- vswaroop04 11mo agoIt’s difficult to imagine them generating enough profit to support their current valuations.
- netdevphoenix 1y agoIn the game of musical chairs, there is no official moment when players need to get in position to reach the closest chair. One second there is music and another second later there isn't. However, the that period exists if you can look at the relevant signs: the host hand and body in relation to the music record player. No AI player will admit to be positioning for a sector collapse but it would be naïve to believe that anyone close to ground zero isn't planning contingency plans and are just coasting in the golden age of AI. And those who have the most skin in the game are certainly the ones most incentivise to do so while denying their true intentions. LLMs are going no where but the reality of them not being the civilisation shifting money makers people have hyped them up to be is undeniably setting no matter what the AI astroturfers hiding in HN tell you. People have been jumping off the train or positioning to reach the closest chair when the music stops. Not long ago 2023, the world bubble was just whispered here. 2 years later it has hit mainstream and has been uttered by people holding the money bags. It might be a dream or it might not. The difference is that, if you were in denial, now you are seeing signs that are much harder to deny. And we should expect the upcoming signs to be harder and harder, until the number of people denying reaches to zero right as the bubble fully bursts and the AI startups layoffs begin.
- janalsncm 11mo agoWould be interesting to have a game of musical chairs where the longer the game goes on, the more each player gets if they grab a chair. And N-1 players get a chair still.
- janalsncm 11mo agoI’m realizing this would be an interesting party game. Could probably do it with any stopwatch app. Everyone starts at the same time and holds their phone under the table, the person who presses stop last (i.e. has the highest time) gets zero points, everyone else gets a score equal to what their stopwatch shows.
- gniv 1y agoI wonder if there are people (with money) who have a really good grasp on this market (hardware I mean). For example you could have sold NVDA in August, not much lower than current price, and bought SNDK and 5x-ed your money in 3 months.
- ericmcer 11mo ago5X is a terrible return if you have a magic orb that can tell you the future.
- maerF0x0 11mo agoThey're selling a public asset to the mainstreet dummy, so they can pour money on the AI fire so OpenAI can build more datacenters. This is another vein of circular funding, they're getting their cash from our retirement accounts via institutional investments and index funds.
- arisAlexis 11mo agoSoftbank has underperformed massively. Also they sold again their total stake in 2019. Why is it front news? To feed the AI bubble talk.
- cultofmetatron 11mo agoAI is a gold rush. Nvidia is the leading shovel maker. ... I don't understand the rationale here.
- commandersaki 11mo agoBaka
- thelastgallon 11mo agoI have a LOT of respect for Masayoshi Son. He is the ONLY billionaire on the planet who spends like there is a wealth tax. I wish governments would observe him and eventually impose a wealth tax. It would do everyone a world of good.