SoftBank Group reported a net loss of about ¥1.12tn ($7bn) for its fiscal second quarter on Tuesday 10 November, against a ¥2.5tn profit a year earlier and far worse than analysts had forecast. The largest single item was not a start-up write-down but a bill for turbines: a ¥597.2bn ($3.7bn) loss on power generation equipment it had paid for in advance for US AI data centres, CNBC reported.
Revenue came in at ¥2.22tn, ahead of the ¥2.02tn LSEG consensus, helped by the telecoms business and AI computing. The shares closed 13.9% higher on the day, part of a rebound across Asian technology stocks, though Reuters noted they have almost halved since the start of June.
Where the $3.7bn went
Expecting shortages and long lead times, a SoftBank subsidiary made what one executive called “bridge investments in advance to secure power generation equipment”. Its procurement plans then changed. The loss covers advance payments that could not be refunded on cancellation, as well as fees, chief accounting officer Kazuko Kimiwada said. SoftBank is entitled to rebates of up to $2.1bn on future purchases.
Much of the equipment was linked to the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, where SoftBank has signed a 20-year lease with OpenAI for 8 gigawatts of IT capacity. Cumulative payments for US power equipment stood at $9.48bn at the end of September. “There are many cases where you have to change strategy for what you thought would probably have been OK a year or two ago,” chief financial officer Yoshimitsu Goto told reporters.
The rest of the balance sheet
The Vision Fund segment swung to a quarterly loss of ¥81.6bn from a ¥2.38tn profit a year earlier. A $1.3bn gain on ByteDance was outweighed by falls in listed holdings such as Coupang and Grab. Financing costs more than doubled to ¥462bn in July to September, while SoftBank raised $56.5bn of capital, its largest quarterly total, and increased its margin loan against Arm shares by $5bn to about $25bn.
OpenAI remains the asset that holds the story together. SoftBank’s stake, about 13% according to Reuters, was carried at a fair value of $99.6bn at the end of September. The company has not yet booked any uplift from OpenAI’s latest funding round, which could appear in the third quarter if the round is formally announced.
What it means for founders and investors
The lesson is that power, not chips, is now the hardest input to plan for in AI infrastructure. This is the same week Anthropic agreed to buy $3.4bn of gas generators that another buyer could not finance. Equipment queues are long enough that the largest players are paying deposits years ahead, and Masayoshi Son’s group has just shown what happens when the plan moves after the cheque has cleared.
For start-ups that rent compute, the read-across is pricing. Capacity built on pre-paid, non-refundable power contracts carries that cost into every lease. For investors in Vision Fund-backed companies, the quarter is a reminder that SoftBank’s appetite now depends heavily on one holding. If the OpenAI mark rises, SoftBank’s loan-to-value ratio improves and it has room to keep writing large cheques. If the mark stalls, the margin loans and financing costs become the constraint.
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