Thank you very much for waiting, everyone. Now, we would like to start the SoftBank Group Corp Earnings Results Announcement for the six-month period ended September 30th, 2025. First of all, I would like to introduce today's participant. From left, we have Yoshimitsu Goto, Board Director and CFO.
Kazuko Kimiwada, Corporate Officer, Senior Vice President and CAO. [Kimiwada de Govil. Navneet] Govil, Executive Partner and CFO. SB Investment Advisers and SB Global Advisers. Jason Child], Executive Vice President and CFO.
Today's announcement is live broadcast over the Internet. Now, I would like to invite Yoshimitsu Goto to present you the earnings results and business overview.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you very much for joining us with us today. We would like to have this earnings results announcement for the second quarter. First of all, I have to talk about this. As many of you may know, I am also CEO of Fukuoka SoftBank HAWKS, the professional baseball team in Japan. Thanks to all your support, we are able to have this Japan Championship title first in five years. Fukuoka SoftBank HAWKS, the company itself, has been growing very steadily, which I do not have much chance to share with you, but maybe sometime I will be able to speak about it as well. Set aside. Masa, our Chairman and CEO, with the visit of President Trump from the United States.
He was on media quite often these days, and he's been going back and forth between Japan and the United States quite often to achieve our vision. Also, based on that vision, he's back calculating what do we need to do now. Based on that, he is working very hard to work on the efforts that we need to do now for achieving our vision and goal. Especially, the keyword that we have right now is Physical AI. What that means is that robot, for example, autonomous driving. AI and mobilities or robots will be combined together to provide you more complicated techniques or services. That is coming very close to our life.
To be prepared for such a time to come, we need to be prepared, and we need to work on so that we do also need to complement the area that we are not very good at. In 2010, when we created SoftBank's new 30-year vision, message never changed, but actually, this is a slide that we used back in 2010. Our fingertip is actually caring, heart, and sharing with robot's fingertip. Brain, computer, and the muscles actually connecting. Robot or robotics will be mingled with the society so that the technology or robotics may be able to solve the unsolved issues or problems that the society is facing or societies will be facing. SoftBank Group wanted to achieve the coexisting with the robotics or robots that has a heart or feelings.
Recently, we announced agreements on acquisition of ABB Robotics, and we believe this can be a very big step forward to achieve such goal and vision. To realize ASI, what do we need to do, what we should be doing, that's something that we try to be more specified so that Arm, which is the semiconductor business player, can be expanding the business domains for the chip area together with those companies and powers and data centers. This time, adding the ABB Robotics has become a very big part of our AI model. With this timing, having such great companies to be our family member is going to be something great, which we will be able to show you the good result out of. Here, excuse me, here on that, I would like to go into the more numbers or the financials. There are four key highlights.
First is the fair value of investment in OpenAI, which has been growing dramatically since our investment. It has been increased by $ 14.6 billion, maybe JPY 2.2 trillion or so. With that, to number two, JPY 2.9 trillion, record high net income for this first half. I have been seeing some articles showing the net loss, but actually, this time is a large net income increase. Net asset value, which is the most important KPI for the company, and this was reaching JPY 32.3 trillion at the end of September. Since then, actually, this net asset value keeps growing. Fourth, KPI to measure our soundness of our financials, which is loan to value, and 16.5%, which is more than safe, and at the same time, JPY 4.2 trillion of cash position. Safetiness, soundness also has no issues with our business.
Those four points are our highlights for the first half. Now, let me go into the more specific of the consolidated results. As you can see, sales, again, and loss on investment, income before income tax, net income, each of those index increased compared to the year-on-year basis. Actually, those three are actually hitting the record high for the first half: JPY 3.6 trillion for the income before income tax and JPY 2.9 trillion for net income. If you look back the history of net income, important thing is the kind of trend. JPY 2.9 trillion, this number is also very important and what we appreciate very much, but at the same time, as an investment company, market shares has volatility, goes up and downs, largely ups and largely down as well. The investment company should not be too happy or too sad about those daily volatility.
What is important is we should have a momentum and trend of keeping increasing in net income. As long as we'll be able to keep that trend, I think that we are doing the right thing. You can see here, we do have ups and downs, of course, but trend-wise, we are keeping increasing trend. Here is the gain or loss on investment and net income. The same things apply. There are ups and downs, but again, with the increase in fair value of OpenAI, it became the big driver for the gains for fair value this time. If you have a breakdown of this gain on investment, of course, a large contribution is coming from OpenAI. It is about JPY 2.2 trillion or $14.6 billion. The reason we were able to have this result is because of September last year.
That was the first time we invested in OpenAI. And OpenAI held several times of the financial round, and the latest October round was $500 billion valuation. As a private company, I believe this is one of the largest valuations or the fair value. Our investment in OpenAI is here to simplify it a little bit. So $10.8 billion is the cumulative investment cost, and this, along with the increase in fair value of equity interest, we were able to achieve this number this time. On top of that, as you may know, in total, we are investing up to $30 billion for this year, which contracted at April this year. And the final investment payment will be happening this year, by the end of this year.
That's happening from now, but this has already been contracted so that the share price for this payment or investment has already fixed as well. This is very much similar to a forward contract. The fair value of a forward contract has also been finalized this time and recognized from an accounting point of view. That is why you see this green bar increasing fair value of forward contract, which is $8 billion. In total, that leads to $26.5 billion. You see the investment gain is the gap between $26.5 billion and $10.8 billion, which gives you $14.6 billion as an investment gain for the second quarter. The key indicators. These are the three KPIs that are the most important indicators for the company and no change from the past. Net asset value at the end of September, JPY 33.3 trillion. Loan to value, 16.5%.
The very safe and low-level cash position, JPY 4.2 trillion. Last year, excuse me, last quarter compared to the June end, all these indicators are improved. Net asset value, latest number as of Friday last week, for your reference, this is a proforma basis and JPY 36.2 trillion. This is the record high number. Loan to value, it remained at very low level. During the COVID, like 2021, we were exceeding a little bit above the 20%. Of course, the lower is better, but if you go too low, then that means we're not making any investment activities. We need a kind of a good position in between there. 2023 to 2024, it's been kept very low to 7%-8%. From there, we came back to investment mode.
With all those investment activities, that gives us a 16.5%, which I believe is a very good level of loan to value. Cash position, JPY 4.2 trillion, which is also very stable. If it is too much or too high, that is not efficient. I think we also need to find a good level there too. Next, let me talk about SoftBank Vision Fund. Looking at SVF segment for the second quarter, we recorded JPY 19 billion driven by fair value gain on OpenAI of JPY 19 billion. JPY 12 billion came from OpenAI plus others, JPY 6 billion. JPY 19 billion is amazing. Excluding OpenAI, JPY 6 billion shows strong growth backed by other portfolio companies. OpenAI, that kind of home run is needed when you manage funds, but also you need regular hit like other investments. On the right-hand side of this chart shows SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
Vision Fund 2 is the vehicle to invest in OpenAI. So gain or loss from OpenAI is reflected on the right-hand side. Obviously, OpenAI takes a majority of the part. Left-hand side shows SoftBank Vision Fund 1. It showed $5.7 billion, which is also a big number. If you look at the breakdown, public portfolio companies, which have been growing since listing, grew, and also private investments grew as well. Both SVF1 and SVF2 grew, which is very meaningful in the second quarter. As a result, since inception, the cumulative investment sometimes performed good, other times performed bad due to poor market conditions. There were some challenging times, especially in the COVID, 2020 or 2021. We did appropriate accounting treatments like write down, and we are beginning to see a strong turnaround. It shows public listings and a pipeline. Left-hand side shows public listings since inception.
We listed 58. In the second quarter, finally, Klarna was listed. We expect further growth and bigger valuation. The right-hand side shows pipeline. Total fair value of late-stage portfolio from our perspective is $56 billion. PayPay and Lenskart already filed. In fact, Lenskart just recently, actually yesterday, listed after filing. Also, Meesho and other companies already filed for listing. The left-hand side shows select late-stage portfolio companies, including OpenAI, ByteDance, and Fanatics, those big names, together with OYO, Revolut, and Yanolja. These are among the companies that are in our pipeline. We expect them to grow their value further, and I hope that you will have a high expectation as ours too. Now, PayPay. Timing of IPO, we cannot make a comment, as you know. We can talk about business of PayPay.
Number of registered users exceeded 71 million, as shown on the screen. It means one in two people in Japan used PayPay, and two out of three smartphone users use PayPay in Japan, which is significant. Two of their key indicators are GMV and EBITDA. GMV grew 25% year-on-year to JPY 9.2 trillion, whereas EBITDA doubled year-on-year to JPY 48 billion. They are ready for IPO, and they are performing pretty good. Now, let me talk about Arm. To put it in one word, steadily growing. As you can see, they hit record high revenue, license, and royalty revenues in the first half of the year. Non-GAAP operating income was up by 14% year-on-year. You can see how Arm is performing pretty good. Of course, they want to invest in R&D, which is growing as the business grows. Still, bigger income offset those R&D investments even more.
Let me pick up two highlights. One is a compute subsystem, which is one of the pillars to support Arm's business. It enables even higher royalty rates than Armv9 by utilizing multiple Arm technologies. In the second quarter, they got three more deals totaling 19 companies. While 19 may sound very small, however, those include hyper players, big companies like Microsoft and Samsung. So those big companies have been adopters of Arm's latest technology. Also, they announced Lumex CSS for mobile devices, like smartphones and laptop PCs. This CSS integrates the most advanced CPU, GPU, and system IP to accelerate AI performance on edge devices. As you can see, compared to previous generations, you can see up to 5x AI performance, 2.8x faster audio generation, and 3x better energy performance. Now, guidance. As you can see, revenue-wise, $1.225 billion or 25% year-on-year.
As revenue grows, as you can see, investment in R&D is growing. Still, we expect they can still post the revenue and profit. In fact, cost should be used as early as possible, which I think is true not only to Arm, but also SoftBank's business model. Properly and in a big fashion, we want to spend the necessary expenses, exceed OpenAI. Since the investment in OpenAI, we spent about a year or so. I think their focus area was probably whether they will be successfully making a restructuring. If it was a former structure, they may be difficult to go into market and so on. Now that they have completed all the dialogues with the concerned party and completed the recapitalization, as you see, OpenAI Group PBC, the Profit Benefit Corporation, will be able to access the market.
As a shareholder, OpenAI Foundation, nonprofit organization, will be holding 36%, and Microsoft, 27%, Vision Fund, or SoftBank Group, about 11%, and other employees and other investors. This is the current ownership ratios amongst the concerned party. The investment so far and the investment for the future that I would like to summarize once again. April, we agreed investment commitment total $40 billion, of which $10 billion was syndicated out to the other investors. $30 billion is investment from the SoftBank Group. First closing completed back in this April, $2.5 billion co-investors syndication has also completed, and $7.5 billion has been also paid out. Second closing, total $30 billion paid by the end of December. Syndication has been already fully subscribed. $22.5 billion will be proceeding as scheduled by the end of December. I also would like to check the business status of OpenAI.
If you look at the weekly active users, continuously growing. As of October this year, they have already exceeded 800 million users. That is actually making an even bigger gap between other competitors who provide a similar type of service. As a comparison, the number of the app downloads can be one good example for you to refer to. ChatGPT, 871 million times of the downloads, which also outpaces competitors. Annual recurring revenue, which is also called as ARR. As of September, which is the black bar, if you multiply it by 12, that is the number. This is also making a significant increase. We believe that the subscribing numbers are increasing well. That is going to be very positive for the financial numbers as well. ChatGPT is not the only service.
Actually, as you see, they are providing several new releases of the services one after another. These are also a good reference point for you to understand what kind of services OpenAI is providing. For the own investment, the number-wise, it is not too large, but because they have a financial round, $6.6 billion of the offering has made, of which we have also invested or participated, $1.45 billion. As you see on your right-hand side, other than us, there are other very well-known investors participating, such as Thrive, Dragoneer, or T. Rowe Price. Stargate Project has been announced back in January together with OpenAI and Oracle. In September, we made a joint press release. We have been seeing a clear path to securing full $500 billion over 10 GW commitment. We will be making a specific site structure to the project.
I think that we are coming closer to be able to introduce you to each respective project. Another announcement we made about was the Crystal intelligence. This is mainly played by SoftBank Corp, our domestic telecom company, together with OpenAI. A few days ago, November 5th, SB OAI Japan, who will be exclusively offering up Crystal intelligence, was launched. We, as a holding company, SoftBank Group and SoftBank Corp, the mobile telecom operator, are jointly investing in the company called Sea Holding as a holding company. This Sea Holding and OpenAI are investing 50-50 as a joint venture, which is called SB OAI Japan. In 2026, SB OAI Japan is aiming to start launching services. With Mr. Miyakawa's lead, who is the CEO of SoftBank Corp, AI agent development internal tests have been conducted so that they will be able to be fully prepared as an enterprise service for the enterprise customers.
Now, let me dive into Physical AI. This October, we agreed to acquire ABB's Robotics Business in October 2025. We would like to realize ASI and robotics fusions to pioneer humanity's future. Mark and Morten, our ABB CEO and ABB Robotics Division President, share the time with Masa, our CEO, as you can tell from his smile. This is a quick video to share with you.
Imagine a world where people work effortlessly alongside intelligent AI-enabled robots, enhancing the nature of work and the work of nature, driving productivity, sustainability, and efficiency, advancing new solutions and helping industries to operate leaner and cleaner, from automotive to logistics, from construction to healthcare.
At ABB, we do not need to imagine this world because we are making it possible today. For more than 50 years, we have been helping our customers to outperform by doing more and doing it faster, safer, and smarter through our innovative robotic technology and AI. We are only just getting started, bringing the power to outrun to more people, in more businesses, in more industries. ABB, engineered to outrun.
Towards ASI, these four elements or areas are the efforts that we are making right now. How are we going to make it happen? We believe that these are the four key pieces that we believe are important. This time, another piece is added to realize ASI, which is ABB Robotics. ABB Robotics Business that I would like to touch on. They are the second largest in the industry and located in Zurich, Switzerland.
They have about 7,000 employees, which includes many engineers. Revenue: $2.2 billion. This is a comparison to share with you the competitive landscape. Revenue is the second in the industry. Cumulative robot shipments actually also the second in the industry after FANUC. They are positioned in a very well-placed position. $5.3 billion, which is about JPY 800 billion, which is, of course, a large investment. It was fully discussed at our board of directors meeting. If we try to buy FANUC, their market cap is like JPY 5 trillion. We would never be able to do. Of course, FANUC is a great company. We understand. That is why their market cap is large. This time, we are able to add ABB Robotics with JPY 800 billion for our family member as an additional key piece, which is a great migration for the company overall.
Their strengths are that they have many: R&D to manufacturing, sales to service. They do have full platform capabilities and a global presence in over 44 countries with 7,000 employees and 500,000 robots shipped. The manufacturing plant head office is located in Sweden, U.S., and China. Physical AI's another agenda is autonomous driving. We've been investing in Wayve in the U.K. They have unique characteristics of the autonomous driving technology. Actually, their world model enables autonomous driving without HD map. Not only the U.K., where the head office is located, but they are developed into the U.S. market as well. In April, they also launched in Japan. It was a little bit of a struggle in the beginning, but actually, they are very steadily providing the autonomous driving in Japan right now. Another video to share with you. This is quite interesting.
I have my dedicated driver, my chauffeur. I think this is better. Masa, you've set us the Tokyo Challenge. I did the London Challenge a year ago, two years ago. We drove in London in the dark of night. In the evening. Here we are in Tokyo with the Tokyo Tower in front of us. It's beautiful. Yeah, so that kind of intelligent judgment you have to do. I mean, the pedestrian just stepped out from behind an occlusion and safely slowed down. Yeah, this is definitely the right approach, new approach. Time and age are different. Rules are different. Yes. From London versus Tokyo. But now you have adapted all of those, right? Okay, here we go. Another right turn, and this will complete level two of the Tokyo Challenge. This is a challenge. Even for humor, you have to decide when to step in.
You see that technique coming. We judged that it was enough of a gap. That's amazing. This is tight. I mean, you can look at how we're being responsive to the vehicles around us. It's smooth. It's smooth. It's driving through. It's smooth. Much more smooth than last time I tried with you in London. There we go. Level three, the boss level, the final challenge of the Tokyo Challenge. Yeah, this is tougher, much tougher. Many people. Yeah. This is challenging. You cannot wait forever. You have to nudge. Oh, wow. [Foreign language] Look at that. [Foreign language] We are through. What was the impression of today's Tokyo Challenge? It's a real honor to be here in Japan and to be partnering with great partners like SoftBank and Nissan.
Today, we drove through, I think, some of the most challenging scenarios here in Tokyo and showed that our embodied AI can safely operate on the roads in Japan.
I don't really understand the technology and autonomous driving. I don't know how that can happen, how that can make it happen. I think that not only Masa, but also the interview was also on the driving. I was so afraid that if the car hit the people, but it did make us very safe to drive. I'm very much expecting the good future of this company. The next one is also all the investment portfolio on Nuro. Just announced the next generation autonomous robot taxi program with Lucid and Uber in July this year.
Lucid EV vehicle, neural autonomous driving system, and a global ride-hailing platform, Uber, that with this framework around the second half of 2026, they are scheduling to launch in major U.S. cities and also planning to deploy worldwide over the next six years. This is another interesting challenge that the autonomous driving technology is facing and addressing. We have been making diversified robotics investments. With ABB Robotics, we hope that we will be able to pursue further commercial opportunities and synergies. You just saw the video of autonomous driving. Other than that, we have robotics areas like distribution systems or the auto factories and so on. There are several portfolio companies that we have invested in so far. With that, organically, we would like to create good synergies among those members so that we will be able to create another level of the value.
Now, Masa and President Trump were often covered by media. As you know, Japan and the U.S. signed in September 2025 the Memorandum of Understanding on Strategic Investments, which outlines Japan's commitment to investment up to $550 billion in the U.S. Many Japanese and American companies, including SoftBank, formed the up to $332 billion funding framework. As you can see, Masa, for some reason, always sits in the middle. SoftBank Group is one of the members to support critical power infrastructure in the U.S. This was the photo taken when the framework agreement was signed with President Trump, Commerce Secretary Lutnick, and Ambassador Glass. Masa wore a red tie. Let me touch upon financial strategy now. Financial policy that we communicate with you for a long time, it remains unchanged. We maintain LTV below 25% in normal times.
Sorry, I keep saying again and again, 25% itself is pretty safe. Upper threshold of 35%, even in times of emergency, it may happen in the future, whether 25% or higher or lower. We want to maintain the level. Also, we want to maintain at least two years' worth of bond redemption in cash. It shows investment amounts since the beginning of 2025 in the first and second quarter. OpenAI's first half total was $8.6 billion, including $1.1 billion in the second quarter. Looking at Q3, the next round of investment in OpenAI is planned to be executed at $22.5 billion. All processes should be completed by the end of December to invest in Ampere. All in all, in the third quarter, we estimate about $30.5 billion of investment. We are ready for the funding.
With completion of the estimated investment, investment in OpenAI in total would be $34.7 billion. I said that we are ready for funding and how we do. I'm not going to go into details in numbers per deal or per transaction. We have three paths: cash position, obviously, we have access to. Other than that, we can utilize assets held. NAV is net asset value. Here, we are looking at the asset value of holdings, which is around JPY 40 trillion. Of the assets, 70% is listed shares. By utilizing different tools, we can utilize assets held. For example, for a margin loan or derivatives or collar transactions or forward transactions. We have a variety of options that we could utilize. That is financing with asset bank finance.
Also, we can utilize debt market, domestic and foreign bonds market, the markets that we can utilize to issue bonds. Not only Japanese mega banks, but other Japanese banks and foreign banks, including JP Morgan, give us strong support always. Not only just simple loans, we could do hybrid funding with 50% traded as equity capital. Such funding can lead to strengthening capital. We want to provide a lot of investment opportunities for investors while we can still maintain financial strength. Through those options and tools, we make sure that we are ready for funding in a very safe manner. Talking about asset monetization, we sold T-Mobile shares, for example, and we sold NVIDIA shares, which we held for a long time. Also, we sold Deutsche Telekom shares. With Arm shares, we upsized a margin loan to $20 billion, and $11.5 billion remains undrawn.
To summarize financial highlights in the first half of this fiscal year, it's shown on the slide. Our share price recently has been going up and down dynamically. Since the beginning of the year, we grew 3.8 x. We want to provide as many investment opportunities as possible. We need to pay attention to TSE's guidance. We recently decided to do share split ratio 1:4. Based on closing price as of November 10, 2025, minimum investment amount would go from JPY 2.2 million to JPY 500,000 after the share split. I think it's needed to go cheaper for retail investors to utilize for their individual savings account investment. Last but not the least, our initiatives in Physical AI, which is to combine brain and body. We want to figure out how much impact this could have on our daily life.
We want to really create happiness for humans. In this sector, we try to be a leader, hopefully, at AGM this year. Masa claimed that we want to be number one ASI platform provider after 10 years. We hope that you get the flavor of that vast idea in my presentation. Thank you very much for your attendance. Thank you.
Thank you. Now, we would like to take questions. First, we would 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 turn off the website live distributions to avoid any echoing. If you have any questions, please press the raise hand button and wait for your name to be called. Also, if you would like to withdraw your question, please press the lower hand button.
For those who are connecting to Japanese Zoom, please make your question in Japanese. We would like to take up to two questions per person so that we can take questions from as many people as possible. Now, we would like to take questions from the floor. On your right, third row from the front with the jacket.
Toyoshima from TV Tokyo. Goto-san mentions regarding the dynamic movement of share price. Recently, especially including your share price, AI-related share price volatility is very wide. Therefore, the stock market is questioning where we are in terms of AI investments. Overheating in expectations for the AI business, is it just the beginning or is it overvalued so that we need to be very worried? Which is your stance? That is my first question.
In relation to that, my second question, the share price of SoftBank Group has been driving a Tokyo Stock Exchange share price largely as well. So AI portfolio companies, including OpenAI, are they appropriate? It's like a heating, like a so-called AI bubble. That's also the risk for some people to say. Do you feel any risk for that?
Thank you for your question. So two questions, but I believe some of them are overlapping. Right now, many services and products will be developed in the AI era. How you value that is a very important but also difficult question. The market tries to obtain that in advance of the others. Sometimes you are too much in advance so that you try to withdraw a little bit. That kind of movement is always happening in the history as well.
For example, back in the year 2000, a so-called internet bubble, was that really the bubble or not? Was actually valued after the bubble finished. 25 years from now, and when we look back, was that really the big volatility? Not really. That is because based on the autonomous movements in the market, sometimes movements made in advance or sometimes it takes a little bit of withdrawing. Right now, the size of the market is larger so that movement is becoming bigger as well. As an investment company, we look at this market and our portfolio company, how do they face and materialize their AI technology or service into their value? That is what we are trying to support with the way of the investment. I do not think I can answer whether this is a bubble or not.
We will be able to tell later, but this is because of the technology, just the beginning. There are lots of movements, which I believe is a good thing. As a finance activity for the investment company, how do we capture the movement while protecting our financials without losing any opportunity? That will be very important for the company. Are we going too far? That's a difficult question to answer in one word, but that's the kind of big picture I have. Do you believe that the risk is bigger if you don't invest? Is that the SoftBank Group's point of view? I think it depends on the people, but our company believes in that way, yes.
Thank you. Next question from the floor.
Murai Diamond. I have two questions. First, about the Stargate Project. Progress of the Stargate Project, could you share with us? According to the announcement as of September 24, it sounds like five sites or data center sites in the U.S. and $400 billion for the next three years. Those are finalized. Over five sites, two, Rose Town and Texas, are the centers where SoftBank and OpenAI are involved. I wonder, should we focus on those two sites as you get involved with OpenAI? And of $400 billion for the next three years, how much will be borne by SoftBank Group?
Thank you for your question. The announcement in September was done, and two sites, Rose Town and Texas, were referred. Since then, there have been some changes. As for the Texas deal, we are on track. The scale and the timeline, once our project is finalized, we would love to share with you.
Another site in Ohio, we made a slight change against the original plan in order to meet demands. The site will be more for manufacturing equipment for AI. That is a slight change of plan. Not only those two sites, there are also many candidate sites. We will figure out how we will proceed with the project. Once each and every project is finalized, we can share with you how much will be borne by SoftBank Group.
Thank you. The next question may be related to the first question or not. When Mr. Trump came to Japan at the dinner, $550 billion of investment scheme was announced there. As you shared with us the photo, SoftBank Group made an announcement that they wanted to involve up to $25 billion, especially in powered infrastructure. I wonder specifically what kind of project you have in your mind, $25 billion that is. SoftBank Group wants to do powered infrastructure for things like Stargate project. Is my understanding correct?
On that, I think same as other companies that showed their interest. At the right time, we would like to communicate with you more properly. At this moment, it's early to tell you more in detail. I appreciate your understanding.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions? The middle row, third from the front, a gray jacket gentleman, please.
My name is Miyajima from Monthly Magazine Factor. Congratulations on the HAWKS Championship and share price. Also doing great. This fall, it's a golden autumn for you and for the company. Is it the best season? Is it right? That's my first question. In addition to that, robot, I believe that Masa has been working for about 20 years. Pepper didn't do well.
You are making a bet on ABB Robotics. He is now 68 years old. How passionate he is and he tried to address robotics. FANUC is a great company like you referred to. I believe ABB Robotics own about 1/3. I believe there are many efforts that need to be taken place. With Masa's passion, he needs to work on. I think this is going to be his revenge on the robotics. What kind of discussions are taking place internally in terms of robotics now?
For me, together with a number of great numbers, financials this quarter, this is a very relieving autumn for me with great results. Masa, on the other hand, is even more passionate, energetic. We need to run along with him.
As for robotics, as you just said, for Masa, robotics is something that he has deep in mind. That has been for his important factor. We started it with Pepper. Pepper was a very cute robot. Because we have done Pepper business, that is why we are able to grow our robotic segments or robotic thinking. Now, with the great collaboration with ABB Robotics and how we're going to develop in the global market, I believe Masa really can't stop thinking about it. He was so excited that he cannot stop thinking about how we're going to create and draw the future. He is 68 years old. He does not look like that at all. He is still very energetic. He is passionate and energetic, even that we're going to be burned from that with the heat. We are trying to run along with him.
Thank you. Any other questions on the floor?
Yagi from Nikkei Newspaper. First question. Additional investment in OpenAI. You mentioned that there was a round in October. And SoftBank Group, the portion was $1.4 billion. Can you tell us when are you going to pay? And OpenAI has the biggest shareholder, Microsoft. Do you have a target equity ratio of OpenAI? How much percentage of OpenAI you want to have?
October we completed round. The amount-wise, it was not big. The payment was already done. About the target percentage of stake in OpenAI, we believe that we have the strongest expectations in OpenAI than any other company. The higher percentage is better, I would say. Now we have 11% after the recapitalization. That is the current percentage at this moment.
Thank you. Second question is about the NAV. JPY 33.3 trillion as of end of September. Calculating from that, NAV per share would be about JPY 23,300 or something. You announced a share split recently. I wonder what's your view on the discount and whether it's included in a premium or not. What's your view?
It's not appropriate to make a comment about a stock price. In a different way, if I may, I would say there are a lot of ingredients with which we can grow. As you can see in our history, we always have a lot of things to do, but not all of them are appreciated. Sometimes most of them were not appreciated, and that resulted in a huge discount. Trend-wise, that could continue for some time. Again, please keep watching us how we grow.
Any other questions? On your left, second from the top.
I'm MJ from Bloomberg. I have two questions. First, regarding NVIDIA.
You mentioned as a part of the monetization you sold, and it was October. Why did you sell NVIDIA in October timeframe? Can you give us more color? Is it because it was at the proceed for the OpenAI investment or because of the level of the share price of NVIDIA?
As an investment company, we always repeat the new investment activities and divestment activities. Out of our portfolio companies, what kind of asset should be replaced with what kind of assets? That is something that we always keep in mind. This year, the OpenAI investment is large. Even more than $30 billion investment needs to be made. For that, we do need to divest our existing portfolio so that that can be utilized for our financing. We do not have any specific meeting in October, or it is nothing to do with NVIDIA itself.
I don't think that I should make any comments about that. The objective was, as you mentioned, that's our objective.
Thank you. My second question. You mentioned about Stargate earlier. Announcement that in September, OpenAI, Oracle, 4.5 GW, $300 billion. Plan was announced. The SoftBank name was not really referred to this project. Are you involved or are you not involved too much about this project?
Stargate Project is shared with OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank Group to build and create the mega data center for AI. Oracle has his own data center business that traditionally they've been running the data center business. They partner with OpenAI. Sometimes we partner with OpenAI, or three of us address the same project. Stargate Project has quite a wide range of interpretation there.
Thank you. Any other questions on the venue?
Makino from NHK. Two questions. First, you mentioned that OpenAI contributed a lot to your great performance. And Goto-san, how do you see OpenAI's growth potential?
I think the easiest way to understand OpenAI's growth potential is their product rollout. GenAI product like ChatGPT. How their products are positioned compared to other competitors' products. Obviously, they are leading others. And competitors are trying hard, and OpenAI are trying even harder. The position of OpenAI, which is in a strong leading position, is harder to catch up. OpenAI keeps enhancing their products going forward. So long as OpenAI keeps trying harder for some time, I think compared to competitors, OpenAI is in the strongest position. That's how we see OpenAI, and we are confident.
Thank you. Next question. You made an announcement to acquire ABB Robotics. And data center and power. You have been making a lot of investments in those sectors. Going forward, what would be focus areas of investment?
Very difficult question. I mentioned four sectors, and all of them are important for us. Not in these sectors. Autonomous driving or other logistics and manufacturing. As AI will transform our lifestyle, there are a lot of areas that will contribute to such growth. We try to invest in great companies. Of course, we cannot do everything. We want to be selective, and there are a lot of more things we can do.
Thank you. Any others? Yes. A person with a raised hand.
Asamura from Nikkei Business. Thank you very much for taking my questions. Not only SoftBank Group, but these days at the stock market, there are people who the companies are doing the capital recycling, just buy and sell, not keeping it long.
Buy and sell is, I believe, something similar to SoftBank Group, and many people respect the way that you do. You are buying in good time and selling in good time. What is the secret sauce?
I do not think we are managing well too much. When you sell or when you buy, you try to buy at bottom, you will never be able to do that. If you sell, of course, you want to buy and sell and selling, but you cannot do that. The capital recycling that you just mentioned, many companies do. They have their own business as well. They have their own operation. We are quite unique because we have our balance sheet investments and the fund investment. Both we do. Buying and selling itself is our main business. New investment and divestment. It does not happen at the same time.
We need a bridge, which is leverage finance. Combining all that to make the company grow, that's something we try to do. That's how we are right now, I think.
Thank you.
Thank you. Any other questions from the venue? If not, that's all from questions on the floor. Next, we'd like to take questions from Zoom participants. Please refrain from connecting to other live streams to avoid any echoing. Just to remind you, if you access to Japanese Zoom, please ask questions in Japanese. First, Masuno-san from Nomura Securities. Please unmute and ask us questions.
Jason-san, I have questions to Jason-san. First, on the earnings call. License revenue for the SoftBank Group in the quarter from April to June. Next quarter from July to September, which was $178 million.
My question is, what kind of license between you and SoftBank Group when Arm develops a new product and you make it licensed to be provided to SoftBank Group, I assume? How do you design license between SoftBank Group and Arm? Second, Arm is investing in R&D more and more. From traditional business, you expand to chiplet and other business. My question is, at what time, how much scale of the respective new areas you anticipate or you expect? Thank you.
Can you hear me? Okay. On the first question, there are actually three deals that Arm and SoftBank have entered into over the last year. Those are each for different successive generations of projects where we've sold a license to SoftBank for Arm IP.
We are providing design services for SoftBank and SoftBank portfolio companies to work on projects that could be used certainly in part for Stargate, as well as for others. We have not announced exactly what those projects will be. However, you should expect us to probably provide more detail when those projects are closer to realization, sometime probably in the next 12 months or so. For the second part of the question, the increase in R&D or engineering expense has stepped up pretty significantly. Part of it is the design services that SoftBank is paying us for. That is covering part of those costs. Also, some of it relates to other investments and exploration into basically full SOC projects. That is also something that we have not announced exactly what those projects will be.
As we get closer to that realization, there are three specific milestones that we need to see. We need to tape out a full SOC, then have samples back, which typically happens four to six months later. Lastly, we have to have non-cancelable POs from a customer. As soon as we realize all three of those milestones, that is when we will announce exactly what these full SOC solutions could be. Until then, we continue to explore and are not yet ready to announce. Again, you should probably hear something about those efforts and what we will actually be delivering sometime within the next 12 months.
Thank you, Jason-san. Just to follow up. Tape out for SOC is different from your project with SoftBank Group. Is my understanding correct?
Could be. I didn't say exactly for SoftBank, that project, we haven't laid out what the milestones are. However, you should assume it'd be somewhat similar. That is once there is a project that has been fully designed, which is what the tape out is, and there are samples, and that there is a customer that's going to provide non-cancelable orders, that's probably when SoftBank would announce that project. SoftBank would announce that in this case because we're designing something for SoftBank. They'd be the one announcing that.
Thank you. I have a clear understanding now. Thank you.
Thank you. Next is from Mr. Yasui, UBS Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you for letting me make questions. I have questions regarding Stargate. How about three detailed questions. First, it's mainly in the United States. But Sam Altman is traveling many places around the world talking about Stargate project. Other than the United States, any possibility SoftBank is going to be involved in other areas? My second question is, I believe that you're taking some time to the site selection, but also power shortage is also becoming an issue. If you can, when you decide the site, do you see any problems or bottleneck? The third question is about project finance. I believe it's going to be taking place for this project. I believe that the major banks in Japan, are they the lender for the project finance? Rates, any ideas?
Yes. For your first question, yes, in many places, Stargate name is picked up on media. In the future, we may be involved in many ways for the future.
However, right now, our key focus is the United States. For your second question, do we see any bottleneck? Not really the bottleneck. First, we need to firmly select the site suitable for the project. That's our process. In the future, we may face potential bottleneck, but that will be the challenge ahead. Actual things to do is creating a big box and also providing the power there. There will be no, if there's any bottleneck, maybe the delivery time for the materials parts, those can be a potential challenge or a bottleneck in the future. Third, cost for financing. I think it's going to be quite a large project finance each one after another. Three major Japanese banks, they have a good expertise in the global project finance, as well as other global financial institutions. JP Morgan and others are also expected to participate.
When it comes to cost, of course, we need to see the standard market level. However, because of the variety of the reason, there may be some increase or decrease of the cost. For example, is it higher possibilities of payout or not? That is something that we cannot really tell at this moment. So please hopefully you understand. [Foreign language]
This concludes the SoftBank Group earnings results announcement for the six-month period ended September 30, 2025. The video footage of this meeting will be distributed on demand from our corporate website. Thank you very much once again for joining the SoftBank Group earnings results announcement for the six-month period ended September 30, 2025.