SoftBank Group swung to a loss in its latest results even as it keeps spending heavily on artificial intelligence. The Japanese investment company reported a net loss attributable to owners of 768.0 billion yen for the six months ended September 30, 2026, a reversal from a 2.92 trillion yen profit a year earlier, according to its consolidated financial report filed on November 10, 2026. Yet its shares closed 13.9 percent higher that day.

The headline numbers

Net sales rose 13.3 percent to 4.24 trillion yen over the half, but the company posted a pre-tax loss of 438.7 billion yen and the 768.0 billion yen bottom-line loss, which it described as a deterioration of 3.69 trillion yen from the prior year. The second quarter alone was worse: SoftBank swung to a net loss of about 1.12 trillion yen, or roughly 7 billion dollars, for the three months, CNBC reported, because a profitable first quarter had offset part of the half-year figure.

The loss is striking because SoftBank's core AI investments did not all go against it. The Vision Funds segment still recorded investment gains of 705.6 billion yen over the half, down 79 percent from a year earlier, helped by a 569.4 billion yen rise in the value of its ByteDance stake, while public holdings such as Coupang fell.

Where the money was lost

The single clearest driver sits outside the funds. SoftBank booked a 597.2 billion yen loss on what it called the realignment of procurement plans for power generation-related equipment for AI data center projects in the United States. Through a unit it refers to as SB7, the company had committed to buying power equipment for US sites, including the PORTS-Pike Technology Campus in Pike County, Ohio, with cumulative procurement payments reaching about 1.5 trillion yen, or 9.48 billion dollars. When it changed that strategy, a large part of those outlays could not be recovered.

Declines in the value of SoftBank's stake in chipmaker Intel also weighed on the result, the company and CNBC said. SoftBank has raised billions against that holding, including 7.35 billion dollars in prepaid forward contracts backed by its Intel shares in August 2026.

Still spending on AI

What the quarter does not show is any retreat from the AI theme. During the period SoftBank, through a US subsidiary, bought DigitalBridge Group, a manager of digital infrastructure including data centers and fiber networks, for 3.1 billion dollars, a deal that added 308 new subsidiaries to its accounts. It has built a new AI Computing segment around Arm, the recently acquired chip designer Ampere and Graphcore.

Its biggest single bet remains OpenAI. SoftBank put its cumulative investment in the ChatGPT maker at 54.6 billion dollars, carried at a fair value of 99.6 billion dollars, for a paper gain of about 45 billion dollars, per the company's own figures. That mark explains part of why investors looked past the loss: the headline red ink came from an equipment writedown and mark-to-market swings, while the marquee AI stake is still carried well above cost.

To fund these bets, SoftBank has leaned on borrowing against its own holdings rather than selling them. Beyond the Intel-backed contracts, a financing subsidiary raised 5.0 billion dollars in September 2026 by increasing a margin loan backed by its Arm shares. The approach lets the company raise cash without giving up prized stakes, but it ties its balance sheet ever more tightly to the market value of a handful of AI and chip holdings, so a drop in any one of them can ripple through both its results and its debt.

Why the stock rose anyway

A 13.9 percent jump on a day the company reports a multi-billion-dollar loss looks odd until you separate the moving parts. Much of the loss was a one-time charge on power equipment and the reversal of unrealized gains, not a drop in the operating businesses. Revenue grew, the Arm and telecom units kept generating sales, and the OpenAI mark stayed large. Investors appeared to treat the quarter as a messy but not structural setback.

The result still carries a warning. SoftBank's model now rests on enormous, early commitments to AI infrastructure, from chips to the electricity that powers data centers, and the 597.2 billion yen writedown shows how quickly those bets can sour when plans change. The company is spending real cash today against returns that depend on an AI build-out that is still years from proving its economics.

For investors in the broad market, SoftBank sits at the center of the same AI question that has whipped US stocks this month. Its results landed during a stretch of sharp swings in chip and AI shares, and its willingness to keep writing large checks is both a vote of confidence in the theme and a reminder of how much capital is riding on it.

SoftBank's next quarterly results, covering the period to December 31, 2026, are due early in 2027. Between now and then, the value of its Intel, Arm and OpenAI positions, and the pace of its data-center spending, will decide whether this half-year loss was a one-off or the start of a costlier phase.

For the market backdrop to this report, see our coverage of the November 5 AI stock selloff. For another AI bet with public-market implications, see our piece on the OpenAI IPO timing.