Thank you very much for waiting everyone. Now we would like to start the SoftBank G roup Corp Earnings Results Announcement for six month period ended September 30th, 2024. First of all, I would like to introduce today's participants. From left we have Mr. Yoshimitsu Goto, Board Director and CFO. Ms. Kazuko Kimiwada, Corporate Officer, Senior Vice President and Head of Accounting Unit. Mr. Navneet Govil, CFO, SB Investment Advisers and SB Global Advisers. And Mr. Ian Thornton, IR Vice President. Today's announcement is live broadcast over Internet. Now I would like to invite Yoshimitsu Goto to present you the earnings results and business overview. Mr. Goto, please.
Thank you for the introduction. This is Goto speaking. Thank you very much for joining during your busy schedule. We would like to announce the numbers which actually is. I'm quite happy with. With good numbers good results.
The one thing that I couldn't achieve this term was that Hawks could not win the Japan Championship which is one big leftover. That's something that we need to do challenge again for the next year. So there is no reason for the loss. So I believe that we need to review once again and do it again. Actually the earnings is not the lose actually win and the win there is no, t here is a reason for win as well. So I would like to explain why. This time for the good numbers start with highlights. Net income was over JPY 1 trillion mainly driven by good performance of investments which has been a challenge in the past two years which is a Vision Fund made a good performance this quarter and also T-Mobile share price is doing pretty good.
So as a result that made quite a good contribution to the earnings results this time. And net asset value which is actually our enterprise value itself of our company remained high and at JPY 29 trillion at the end of September. After that, market is doing much even better. So that brings us even better results. For the latest numbers, Vision Fund recorded JPY 610 billion as an investment gain and also posting cumulative gains which is another kind of highlights and a symbolic message to the market and performance. Also continuous excel. And as a result we are able to maintain the very robust and stable financials and also maintain ample cash reserves which will enable us to further AI investments. So I'd like to go into a little bit of more details starting with consolidated results.
As I mentioned, net income for the first half exceeding one trillion JPY now compared to the year-ago first half of 2023 actually is increased by JPY 2.4 trillion and investment gains was JPY 2.6 trillion. So that compared to the last year first half JPY 3.6 trillion increase. The breakdown of these numbers will be followed by next pages. Here the investments gain and loss and net income quarterly basis. Two trillion JPY and over of the gain on investments for the quarterly basis. And if you see more in details, two trillion JPY gain in investments mainly due to the blue portion JPY 567 billion from the Vision Fund and the green bar inside of it you see the dotted lines which is a T-Mobile contribution by JPY 387 billion.
So, total Vision Fund in the T-Mobile or by JPY 1 trillion of the performance contribution remaining, you may wonder, is actually from the Alibaba transaction. This is financially. It's all completed financing, and as a scheme we have used the prepaid forward contracts. As a result, we set the share price and agree the future sales and get the money in advance, and because there are some share remain for before the settlement and that actually have a market valuations and evaluation gain was about JPY 1 trillion or so, but that also been settled. Therefore this is the kind of adjustments, so the sales has already been completed and later on even that share price increase, but still that does not impact to the cash settlements. Therefore accounting wise evaluation increase. However, that's been already done, so that's going to be adjusted through the derivative transaction.
In total, it's about JPY 1 trillion. However, at the same time we see the forex movements and because of the forex movements we have about the difference of JPY 400 billion. So the green portion is the gain o n Alibaba shares but below JPY 1.4 trillion with the JPY 400 billion of the forex impacts.
That also needs to be considered altogether. Put JPY 2 trillion of the positive. You can exclude the Alibaba settlements. Maybe JPY 1 trillion of the Vision Fund in T-Mobile is a big contributor for the performance this time. But even with that compared to the first quarter year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter for 2023 actually we are making quite a steady growth which is a very happy result for us. Key indicators. Three indicators that we see as key indicators: net asset value, loan-to-value and also cash position net asset value. As you saw on previous pages, JPY 29 trillion at the end of September loan-to-value 12.5% cash position JPY 3.83 trillion.
Not only net asset value, but the loan-to-value and cash position that was also contributed by the good market performance and latest wise loan-to-value probably less than 12%, somewhere around 11% and cash position because of the forex actually that we are exceeding JPY 4 trillion as of latest number wise so it is possibly moving. As a matter of fact net asset value sees slight decrease mainly because SoftBank Corp. decreased slightly. Instead we see the increase in T-Mobile's and Vision Fund and also we have a forex impact so we have some kind of a bounce back. Starting from 1998. This is a history of net asset value of ours JPY 29 trillion. I believe that that gives you the good latest view on SoftBank Group
About t he T-Mobile that I touched upon sometimes earlier. It was 21 when we acquired Sprint. We acquired Sprint in 2023. Since then they were turning around the business and in 2020 they were merged with T-Mobile, and back then the stock price was $82, but at the last day of last week it went up to a historic high of $238 or three times bigger than the one when we merged with T-Mobile and Sprint since the merger. Compared to other carriers in terms of index like AT&T, Verizon in the U.S. and China Mobile which was the number one in the world and the Nasdaq which is a tech related index. If you compare with them, T-Mobile outperformed China Mobile, AT&T and Verizon even against Nasdaq, T-Mobile is way ahead.
So, looking at the stock price or market cap, if you take a look at on the left-hand side when we acquired Sprint 2012, actually back then this tiny tiny bar was T-Mobile plus Sprint $22 billion so far behind Verizon and AT&T as of end of September. However, T-Mobile exceeded not only AT&T, Verizon but also China Mobile which once was number one in the world. Where this growth come from free cash flow this pink is T-Mobile. As you can see, the free cash flow is building up steadily. On the other hand, Verizon, AT&T in the last four, five years they are on the declining trend. So it's very clear contrast between T-Mobile and their competitors in the U.S.
From our investment performance perspective, equity, we put about JPY 0.4 trillion and JPY 2.1 trillion was leveraged and borrowing was already repaid and equity value grew from JPY 0.4 trillion to JPY 3.9 trillion. The MOIC was almost 9, excuse me 10 times and the equity IRR 26%. Performance was clearly good. We reminded you on this because T-Mobile contributed a lot to our great performance for this term. Still some people believe SoftBank failed in the Sprint transaction. Probably it's our fault not being able to communicate well with the community. Again we just wanted to show again our investment in Sprint turned out to be great. Talking about investment of SoftBank, Alibaba, Arm and Sprint were the major investment we made so far. Alibaba we invested a little bit in the beginning, so MOIC is tremendous like 1,340 times, but that's reality.
[return] of 3.3 [times the] investment, 2.3 was equity and MOIC was 8 and IRR is almost 30% and we can still expect upside because Arm will play a key role in AI development. About forex, which has been fluctuating in the first half of this fiscal year, it was 151 yen per dollar as of March end and as of end of September 142 yen. At this level, the foreign exchange had a negative impact on NAV by JPY 1.9 trillion and also negative impact on equity by JPY 1.3 trillion. Negative, but on the other hand positive impact on net income, consolidated net income [positive impact] by JPY 0.3 trillion yen and now that Mr. Trump was elected as the president and the rate is around 153 yen per dollar recently, so again the market condition changes as forex changes.
So looking at that kind of changes, we will be flexible in terms of what kind of actions we should take about the cash position for this quarter. Arm listed last year and at that time we purchased Vision Fund holding and in this term the payment took place. So investment related, including installments for Arm share transaction consideration, was the driver of reduction of a cash position. On the other hand we did a debt financing. So from a cash flow perspective we saw a positive number. But all in all net cash position as of end of September was JPY 3.8 trillion. But more recently it should exceed over 4 trillion thanks to the better market condition and always keeping two years worth of bond redemption is the commitment we make and we are actually making the commitment.
In fact, not only two years but also three, four years of bond redemption can be possible at this cash position. LTV 12.5% very stable and low level. Recently even lower than 11% so even much safer. Looking back the history of cash position, this is the trend constantly we have capped around JPY 4 trillion. Now shifting gear to SVF.
So, quarterly-based gain and loss on investments this quarter [is a] JPY four billion gain in this quarter, which is a very good number. This combined Vision Funds numbers in the past few years. There are big ups and big downs, but when we see the big downs we always tried the very conservative marks or valuations and I believe based on such a history I believe that we were able to make a good result. We would like to maintain a very conservative view and at the same time share such numbers and results.
First there are two Vision Fund 1 and 2 being started. On your left hand side, the NAV one is the Vision Fund 1 results: mainly public shares and also the private shares and making a good momentum. Actually, the highlights this quarter is on your right hand side, Vision Fund 2, because the investment started about three years ago and valuations evaluation for the private equity was relatively high back then and also after then market kind of sluggish. Therefore, that has been impacted to the number. Still, there are lots of public private securities in Vision Fund 2. But this time that we see the good improvements and also the inside of the portfolio we've been seeing lots of good potentials and we believe is making a good work to boost overall results for the Vision Fund 2.
Here is some highlights for the Vision Fund 1 portfolio companies. For the public company wise, Coupang fair value was $8.6 billion. Along with the increase in valuation we have a $1.2 billion unrealized gain. Valuation gain is recorded and ride sharing company Didi in China. It's like a type of company and they have withdrawal from the U.S. market once but still that the transaction is ongoing and fair value is now $4.6 billion and this is also making a good growth. These two are the kind of major highlights for the Vision Fund 1 but also including the other public portfolio companies this quarter $2.8 billion in total of the public companies. Vision Fund 2. Now that we see IPOs from the portfolio companies in Vision Fund 2 more and more. This time this quarter especially the good contributor was the Ola Electric, FirstCry IPO .
There are also other public companies. But it hasn't spent too much time after the IPO. So that does not make a big contribution to the result. But at the same time we do have a good pipeline and the private companies in total is a little bit shy of JPY 1 billion. And that was another good contributor for this time result. So with the small efforts by each portfolio companies that comes down up to this number. If you go inside you see that Revolut or Klarna they are making a good growth. Now. For the details, Vision Fund 1 and Vision Fund 2 we will be able to share as we have Navneet in person so that he will be able to give you more colors. Obviously at the investor briefing after this announcement. And here the gain and loss on investment cumulative.
Here is a turn to positive for the first time in nine quarters. I believe that is a kind of a big message for us this time because in the past two years or so we've been working hard but also were not able to bring to the positive number, but now that we are able to come to this close, of course we may see a volatility ahead, but now that we're seeing more and more public companies, public portfolios in Vision Fund 1 and Vision Fund 2 also start seeing more and more companies late stage becoming entering into the late stage portfolio of companies are increasing. So that's something that we are very much expecting in the future. Vision Fund 1 cumulative investment return. Recap on your left hand side is the investment cost because Vision Fund 1 already finished its investment period.
So, 89.5, no change between June and September end, and the current cumulative investment return on the right hand side. Those two bars far right is the end of September number, $112 billion three months before. So like a June end, actually you see the good growth from June end to September end. Green portion is the already exited end. Blue, we're seeing improvements in public companies. Those are the companies that we still hold in dark blue in the very bottom. Those are the private companies. Here in the private companies, we do still have a good attractive companies such as ByteDance, Fanatics. So those are also we have a good expectations for the valuations, and not only that, we have some others as well. So now that we are reaching $212 billion.
We believe we start seeing a good kind of the results for the return for the Vision Fund 1. Now this fund life will be 2029 and also they have a two-year extension option too. Vision Fund 2 investment costs on your left-hand side $53.6 billion investments so far and still having a bit difficult quarters in the past for the performance. But this September end we were able to achieve $32.6 billion return compared to Vision Fund 1. It still has good proportion of the investment portfolio is still the private companies. So we would like to keep a good eye on them. And of course in addition to that we would like to continuously have new investment activities. So that's going to be also another important factor for Vision Fund 2 performance.
Let me also go into a little bit more details in the Vision Fund 2 portfolio companies. This is the public listings and the pipelines. We have 53 listings so far since inception. Also for this second quarter we had two IPOs: FirstCry and Ola Electric.
On your right-hand side late-stage portfolio they in a good growth they can start seeing for all the preparations and we seeing the $34 billion for the late-stage portfolio ByteDance Fanatics or Ola which is a parent company for Ola Electric that went IPO this time, and on your right-hand side Vision Fund 2 and LatAm Fund PayPay in Japan is also the good expectation we have and Swiggy which is also close to the IPO and OpenAI we made investments from Vision Fund 2 this time which I will touch on later page and two companies that went public this time for this quarter.
This is from a portfolio company of Vision Fund 2. FirstCry and Ola Electric both are the IPO in Indian market. FirstCry, as you can imagine from the name of the company, that this is the online store for newborn and baby and kids products. And on your right hand side Ola Electric. This is manufactures electric scooters and provides products globally, so like scooters so-called. That's the main products for this company and well received in the market. And MOIC is also very stable now in Vision Fund 2 also making new investment activities in very selective manner and adding one by one. One of which is Glean that provides best-in-class search functionality and highly user-friendly AI agents for enterprise.
Also, Poolside which supports developers in improving work efficiency by building generative AI tools for software development and coding and OpenAI which well known by you in the market I believe.
Talking about OpenAI, let me share with you some numbers that we can show you. The investment by SVF2 was $500 million. It was the round in September. OpenAI's total round size was $6.6 billion. For that round, post-money valuation of OpenAI was expected at $157 billion. The tremendous valuation as a public entity, but they have a great business model and technology, so it's no surprise.
Revenue. Expecting 131% increase year on year to JPY 370 billion. Business Overview, as you can see: weekly active users, average monthly website visit, ChatGPT Plus subscribers. Weekly active users reached 250 million, average monthly website visit 1.7 billion, and ChatGPT Plus subscribers 11 million. They're on a strong momentum toward the realization of AGI that benefits all of humanity. In fact, that's why we made a decision to invest in the company. Of course there are competitors, but if you compare with them more clearly, it shows OpenAI's ability and capability. Monthly website visits: OpenAI's monthly average was 1.7 billion, but as for September 2024, they hit 3.7 billion at the very bottom. Their competitors like Meta, Claude, and Gemini, those hyperscale, are offering Gen AI powered services, but OpenAI is far far ahead of them.
They've got great market share and I believe that OpenAI will expand the market with its technology and business model. So we will look and see how OpenAI goes with high expectations. And let me share with you a slight change of the organization. Rajeev Misra will step down as co-CEO and Alex Clavel will become sole CEO of SBIA and SBGA. Rajeev. As a member of SoftBank family should be able to contribute to us a lot. And of course Rajeev is a great friend of Masa-san and when Rajeev was an investment banker I got to know him and I have been working with him for over 20 years.
So he is a comrade and I don't speak good English, but as a known Japanese friend, he is one of the great non-Japanese friends of mine and I want to learn continuously from him and appreciate his contribution so far. Now change the subject to Arm. They keep great performance. Quarterly revenue is shown here $844 million. It exceeds upper threshold of $830 million of FY24 second quarter guidance, which was already announced, and for the first half revenue compared to the last quarter and the quarter before that year. Year-on-year 20% increase was recorded for this half year and quarterly non-GAAP operating income is shown here. Now $326 million. That's above analyst consensus on quarterly basis. It looks a little bit down from the quarter two last year
But h alf basis, they recorded 18% year-on-year increase. So great performance. As usual. Investors, analysts and media may have different view on that performance for the short term. Arm is one of the volatile stocks but we are looking at Arm's mid- to long-term growth potential and we hope to help them to increase their value and their corporate value at the moment and their operational excellence and performance. We are happy with them at the moment and Arm announced guidance for the revenue to $920 million- $970 million or 12% - 18% year-on-year growth. For the full year FY 2024 the announced guidance was plus 18% to plus 27%, so those numbers are for your reference. Maybe I should share with you some of the topics that Arm had in the first half of this fiscal year.
Meta's Llama. Excuse me, I think this is a very significant event. Meta developed a new Llama LLM, Llama 3.2. LLM was released and they optimized this to run on Arm-based CPU. This Llama 3.2 has high scalability and delivers high performance. Again, this is optimized for Arm CPUs and in fact it delivers up to five times better performance and more enhanced algorithm. AI algorithms not only can run on cloud but also can run on edge device like mobile. Since performance is great, speed is better and has a greater energy efficiency. So I think that's a great product. Looking back one year post IPO, obviously they have strong financials. On the left hand side as you can see first half royalty revenue was up 20% year on year and license revenue significantly exceeds a forecast made at the IPO.
In the middle column it's talking about technology. They developed and deployed a new technology and Armv9 contributes 25% of royalty revenue. Not only mobile but also. Data centers by major hyperscalers are running on Armv9 and Compute Subsystems is applicable not only to mobile but also other diverse applications like automobile, data center and PC. By utilizing CSS or compute subsystems, users should be able to reduce cost and time to market. I believe that Arm is contributing a lot to the end users, and on the right hand side as you can see Arm provides a positive evaluation from the market. Share price rise around three times post IPO and.
In t he last one-year volatility is clear. Sometimes share price $140, $50, $80, but nonetheless share price grew 3 times post-IPO, so again we are happy with that great performance, and now Arm is included in the Nasdaq 100 and SOX. I'm sure that that should help stabilizing Arm's performance going forward.
Last part is a financial strategy in a previous year-end that we share with you, the financial strategy, and basically no change so far. On your right-hand side, you see one, two, and three: loan-to-value, bond redemption, two-year worth. These are the financial policy that we have. So to check our soundness of our financials, these are the kind of easy to understand type of the disciplines that we are keeping in our company, and that is going to be remain the same. But on your left-hand side, in the past one year, there are many changes in environment and market. We flexibly address those changes and at the same time adhering to financial policies, and at the same time we like to keep building trust relationship with stakeholders so that we'll be able to keep those financial policies.
Equity market and credit market, we have a relationship with them and globally or domestically that we have so many stakeholders for our company and for all the stakeholders. We would like to live up to the expectations of those respective stakeholders and also be good accountabilities for our company's current and also the future. Keep those in mind that we would like to continuously communicate with the market and stakeholders. As an investment company, it's also important how we going to use our cash capital and the capital allocation. Should we use for the new growth or should we use it for the balance sheet or should we use it for the shareholders? We try to pursue the best mix of those factors is our main mission.
Having said that, I believe the most important thing is the growth investments for the future net asset value expansion for the future growth of the company. Of course we haven't made any big investments so far in the past few years. However, we always try to be prepared for opportunities and there will be a time of full-fledged AI. What's the agenda we should be looking for and what are the companies and entrepreneurs we should be investing in all the companies people. That's something that we would like to look for so that we will be able to support the good growth of the company in the future. As I mentioned, capital allocation, how we gonna use the use of proceeds? This is a kind of a simple chart that I can share for the capital allocation and where the money come from.
As an investment company, in principle, we have return from investments and that recycled to new investments, but the one note is that best timing for the investments and monetizing the asset of the best timing never matches. If you have a rule to use monetized money for the new investment activities then you always have to monetize in advance, and if you are not monetized, you will lose opportunity, and I believe leverage finance can bridge those two differences of the timing best timing, so by having the good leveraged debt capacity, we'll be able to take all the opportunities we may have, so we would like to have a good health soundness of the financials for the monetizations and at the same time have the capability for leveraging debt capacity, and the return of redemption will come from the monetization of the assets.
So opportunities for new investment activity should not be missed, and try to have a structure [for] the best scheme for the monetization, and at the same time we would like to increase the asset value. Once we have monetization, we'll be able to think about more improvement in balance sheets or the shareholders return. For the shareholder return [it] can be returned to equity investor as well as credit investor. Both [are] important for us. For the equity investor [a] buyback or those are the schemes we can think of. But for the credit investor, improving our balance sheet and also having more possibilities, a good room for the repayments, that's going to be [an] important factor for the credit investor. Of course, [the] value of the loan, the body of the debt needs to be also improved.
Then that can be a good value for the debt credit investors. So that also means that improving our credit so that is kind of nearly equal to our improvements of the balance sheet. So those three factor is a kind of a one set. And I would like to seek for the best balance of that. Under such circumstances. First six months, half, first half of 2024, it's about $2 billion each for the investment amount. That's something within our expectation. So last year, third quarter and fourth quarter was too small. Probably if we look back and we have a three month period. But investment never comes at the same time for the decision making and the investment execution itself. It has a time difference of course. So if you think about that, it may not make sense to just compare the quarterly basis.
So you may want to see in an annual basis that may be probably better to understand how the company is moving. But just for your reference, this is the actual JPY 2 billion each for the investment amount so far in the first half of 2024. And also mentioned in the previous announcements that for the beginning of this term we had a big drop in share price and we had immediate response with the buyback announcements. So the maximum of the JPY 500 billion is and up to October we have made the progress of the 35% so JPY 174 billion so far. So we have a one-year term. So I think we have a good progress so far.
As a summary once again, as you saw in the earlier pages, number wise, I believe we were able to announce a good number for you this quarter. As a group-wide effort, we are heading towards AI era and what can we do, what kind of role can we play? And in AI era, what kind of changes are we going to see and what can we do for those changes? Arm as a center AI chip business models development is one and also many frontiers of generative AIs needing a data center and electricity for the further development of the business. And I believe to promote the AI business data center can be another agenda for us. And as you may recall, we being working on the robotics starting with Pepper, you may recall that. And with that robotics technology.
Now that we see more and more use cases for the robotics and that is something that we would like to continuously invest in through Vision Fund that we've been already making an investment in robotics and I think there are many potential good companies and businesses around us. Our leader has not yet been motivated to come back to the stage on the earnings but he comes up to the stage from time to time. The latest one was the SoftBank World 2024 as a keynote speaker and he made a comment saying that AGI will be realized within two, three years ASI too within 10 years. So he shared his concept or his ideas regarding AGI and ASI. These timelines of course we have these numbers based on many assumptions and hypothesis.
It may change. However, still we believe that time will come for sure and that's kind of unavoidable results. In his presentation he mentioned that ASI will evolve into super wisdom. I know there are many opinions when it comes to the risks or negative factor, but also we believe that it will contribute to the happiness of all human beings and we need to continuously make an effort onto that. These are the slides that he used at the SoftBank World and how we going to kind of evolve going forward. You see the slide in Masa's photo. On Masa's photo there are four boxes. Information will come to knowledge and that will become intellect and that will become intelligence. So that's a kind of a process that AI will encourage the world to evolve.
As you see on your slide ultimately on your right AI will kind of expand like a big bang and intellect to intelligence and many more evolution. There will be hurdles, there will be frictions but still that will come along with the happiness for human being. That's something that we are hoping and aiming at. With that we believe AI will be able to have a good harmony with humanity. Not only Masa but a group overall group wide. We share the same vision and concept and we do our own job. What can we do under AI era? Always keep that agenda in mind and try to improve our enterprise value. Last slide is always like a big way of ocean and we have boats or we walking around.
Now that we're seeing some summits there but still far away, how can we come close to the summit? We don't know how we're going to climb yet. But there is not only one way to climb there. There may be many ways we can trial and error and try to achieve. We would like to become one of the companies out of many to achieve the top of the mountain and try to improve our enterprise value at the same time and for that progress of this climbing of the mountain that I would like to share with you on a quarterly basis going forward. That is all from me for my presentation. Thank you very much and I will be happy to take any questions after this.
Now we like to start questions and answers session. First we'd like to take questions from the floor. Please wait for the microphone and start with your name and affiliation. For those who are on Zoom, please press raise hand button and wait for your name to be called. And please refrain from connecting to other live stream to avoid any echoing. Again, you can start pressing raise hand button now and wait until your name is called. If you wish to withdraw your question, please press lower hand button. If you access to Japanese Zoom, please ask questions in Japanese. We like to take up to two questions per person so that we can take questions from as many people as possible. Now from the floor. Thank you. MJ from Bloomberg, I have two questions.
First, [question] about Rajeev Misra going forward, what kind of role Rajeev Misra will play in SoftBank or Rajeev's tenure in SoftBank is over. That's first question and second is about investment in OpenAI. Could you give us a background why you decided to invest now and not why not group but by Vision Fund 2
And if possible on Vision Fund's investment strategy. $500 million seems like a big sum among the recent investments from the Vision Fund 2. So. So if we could get an explanation a bit more about the Vision Fund strategy, that'd be great. Thank you.
Thank you very much. First question I will take and maybe I'm going to ask Navneet to add about Rajeev. His key role is over as announced. He himself takes a lead in managing a fund and I'm sure that he will focus on that management. Was that one item? Yes. I'm sure he is focusing on running his own fund. But does that mean complete goodbye to Rajeev? I don't think so. I think we're gonna keep communicating with him in some way and I'm sure he's gonna visit Japan from time to time. I will keep getting in touch with him but like as a management team, for example, that kind of relationship and role is over. About OpenAI.
So they invited potential investors and they created opportunity and this timing of course we have tremendous interest in them and we have close communication with the management and maybe it would be great if timing was earlier but I think still that round was great. Turning and about Vision Fund portfolio. Navneet, would you like to add some color?
Thank you, sure? Thank you, MJ, for your question. In terms of our investment strategy in Vision Fund 2, we're very much focused on companies that are AI leading companies, whether they're product led or leveraging AI. And our criteria is four key things. We look at the quality of the AI tech stack. Basically the key is transformative companies that are driving innovation and value creation through artificial intelligence. The second is product market fit and scalability. So having a good product does not necessarily mean having product market fit. Product not only meets market needs, but also needs to have significant potential for growth, scale and impact. The third thing is unit economics. So it's more than just margins, but overall financial health, sustainable scalable business model that promises long term profitability and success. And the fourth criteria is execution excellence.
So consistent continuous execution to ensure the efficient and effective translation of vision into tangible business results.
You have another question about the Vision Fund, OpenAI? Yes, about OpenAI. Why Vision Fund and not SoftBank Group? So again OpenAI invited potential investors and that was that round in September. And obviously OpenAI has a roadmap and they made it clear from our perspective again it was just a minority investment. And also it's clear about their roadmap going forward. That's why I think it was good to have a fund to invest, not group.
Any other questions? Person in the very front row, please. My name is Kenta from Nikkei. I also like to ask about OpenAI so even from the fund, but I think there is a meaning. So, SoftBank, even if it's a minority, especially when it comes to AI strategy. It may be easier for you to create a synergy because you'll be able to catch the good trend of the latest AI information. So with that, can you talk about AI investments? So of course this is a company leading the world with the generative AI. So this investment is going to be make it even more robust in terms of relationship with them. And even after the investments or before investments, we are continuously keeping the good communication with them so that we can discuss the potentials for the future business that will be also important for us.
There are many to learn from them. In terms of the AI trend in the world, that can be a good learning for us. There's technology. Their future visions can be also the good for learning for us, for our development of the business. At the same time, the top of the company between those two companies are very close to each other as well. We are very much expecting that that can create a good synergies.
Thank you. Any other questions from the floor.
Oh no. From Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper regarding the turn in business performance, you mentioned that you are happy and beginning to see the summit. I think this is the most positive presentation of the earnings result since you started doing that or leading that earnings announcement. I just wanted to ask you your position for the future investment. Masa Son showed interest in investment the size of several trillion yen so backed by the great performance. You are more aggressive or more offensive mode in terms of future investment. It's not just because the great performance. What does great performance mean? That means that our financial stability is even more much stronger. We talked about capital allocation in my presentation and more powerful the financial stability gets and the bigger opportunity that we can tap into.
I'm not saying that we see a big opportunity now, but now we are more ready than before to tap into new opportunities. We are not going to do all at once. We are going to be opportunistic and rather than a size, we want to see whether a deal or potential D is great or not. For example, investment in OpenAI the size big or not. From our perspective, size-wise it was not a huge $500 million but as a deal, as significance it was a big deal, and again we are fully ready and we are ready to tap into new opportunity. Having said that, the financial policy is solid because you may start asking how much you spend for investment. We will invest within a range or within a capacity that we can keep supported by our financial stability.
Any other questions? If not, then we have one more person. Person in the very front row, please. Maggie from Reuters. I have two questions.
First. U.S. presidential election was there and the second Mr. Trump administration and tariff issue potentials towards China for SoftBank Group and any impact to portfolio companies are there. My second question, earnings also announced second quarter has a contract with SoftBank Group was also recorded which was JPY 4,400 million. And what was the content of this contract? First question I will answer that and the second question. Ian, please go ahead. First question, presidential election we have not much of the comments on that. Mr. Trump to be being a president-elect and also I hear the news regarding how they going to have a China policy. But we are the company of investments and of course we need a management of the portfolio company in China and also we very much slow down when it comes to the investment in China.
New investment in China, as we mentioned several times in the past. We don't have any business operation in China, so we don't have any direct impact to our business performance of our company itself. However, indirectly our portfolio company. Depending on China policy by Mr. Trump in the future, there may be some damage or negative effect, and for those we would like to pay close attention and monitor them. For the second, Ian, would you please go ahead.
Yeah. Thank you for your question. Yes, so during last quarter we signed a multi-year agreement with SoftBank to provide them with some technologies and services. This is an agreement very similar to other contracts that we sign with customers and also similar to other agreements we sign with customers. It's not really for us to disclose the contents of that contract nor what end markets are being targeted. That is something we would normally push back to the licensing company. So maybe Goto-san might like to comment.
We believe this is one of the transactions similar to others. I think that you answer everything, Ian.
Thank you.
Any more questions from the floor? If not, we like to conclude the SoftBank Group Corp Earnings Results Announcement for six months ended September 30, 2024. The video footage of this meeting will be distributed on demand from our corporate website. Thank you very much once again for joining SoftBank Group Corp. earnings results announcement for six month period ended September 30, 2024.