Welcome to the SoftBank Group Corp. earnings results announcement for the nine-month period ended December 31st, 2025. Now, we would like to start and also like to introduce today's participants. From left, we have Yoshimitsu Goto, Board Director and CFO. Kazuko Kimiwada, Corporate Officer, Senior Vice President and COO. Navneet Govil, Executive Partner and CFO, SB Investment Advisers and SB Global Advisors. Jason Child, Executive Vice President and CFO, Arm. 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 your time today. This is Goto speaking. This January, I had a knee surgery, and currently, I have a bit difficulty keep standing.
For the next earnings, I believe that I can recover well, so that I'll be able to explain to you and present while I'm standing. I had bad knees and made me difficult to walk straight, and tried to fix that whenever younger. So that's why that I come to this. So I appreciate my parents that who bore me in healthy manner. But this was my first ever surgery, and being admitted in a hospital in my life. And when I am on the wheelchair, I will realize many things which I never experienced or which I never imagined over six years in my life. So it's quite a lessons that I've been learning.
I've been admitted in the hospital for two weeks, and, alcohol-free for two weeks. That was also another first time in life. I lost 8 kg in weight, which is, good news, also. But that's it. That's only for, my things. But, I would like to come into the earnings results, announcements, and I will present while I remain seated. Very sorry about that, and I hope you understand. So this time, agenda for the earnings: to be the number one ASI platform provider. So what is platform? I believe is always a question for you and for us, too. At the general shareholders' annual meeting, last year, Masa presented that we would like to be ASI platform, provider.
Masa was also asked, and he answered, "Oh, we could say a core pillar of the industry, the platform is." This can be also a base for the many things, and we can, we can, build those bases so that many things, which we do not have, can be on top of that, so that we'll be able to grow together. That's something that we have as a mission for SoftBank Group. When the company founded the business, it started with a wholesale of software, and recently I spoke to Son. I was talking to Masa. He said that he never thought that his original business is a wholesaler business. Back then, software was very new, and just wanted to create a system to distribute such software to people, and he started such a system, which was the wholesale.
Then, people will be able to recognize what is the software, and they will be able to learn more, so that Masa started publishing business. Also, or started the broadband media, and many things were put onto the platform since then. So that's a similar thing that we are doing. After 2000, internet era dawned, and ideal platform or platform provider became more important, even more important. Now we are entering into AI and headed towards ASI. Platform provider is the one that we would like to be. We are steadily laying the groundwork right now.
I don't play a game of Go, but we are laying the ground. In the past three months, this quarter, we made quite a large amount of investments in OpenAI, and completed $22.5 billion follow-on investment back in December. As a result, $34.6 billion, which is about JPY 5.4 trillion, invested in total for about 11% ownership. To advance Stargate, we have also strategic partnership formed. Other than OpenAI, we do have several progress. In robotics, ABB, which is well known around the world, we announced the acquisition with $5.4 billion dollars. For chip, we completed the acquisition of $6.5 billion, completed. These are the events that happened in the third quarter.
DigitalBridge, which is the digital infrastructure investment company, and we announced this company's acquisition with $3.1 billion back in December. So each respective events are our groundwork. And I believe this make us progress in the big picture for the framework. And when you look at our portfolio, this has also been changing, and this is something that we should also highlight. About three years ago, if you see by business segment, portfolio for ASI was about limited to pretty much Arm and some robots, in portfolio companies. So about 18% out of the total net asset value was our ASI investments, but now Arm is growing even further. On top of that, we have decided investments in others, including OpenAI, robots, and so on.
So now that more than 60% assets are ASI oriented investments amongst our net asset value. And highlights for us, third quarter, 2025. First was the completed follow-on investment in OpenAI, increasing ownership to about 11%. And net income quarter, first quarter to third quarter, JPY 3.17 trillion, which was increased by JPY 2.54 trillion year-over-year, so which was a very good number. Third, net asset value. So gross less net interest bearing debt was JPY 30.9 trillion at the end of December. So if you only look at this, compared to September end, which was even three more quarter before, this is minus JPY 2.4 trillion.
But the latest figure-wise, it is recovering, and as of today, JPY 33 trillion, as of today. So it's about the same level as December, September end, excuse me. And large investments made with financial policy maintained. So OpenAI follow-on investment were also made, and that actually giving us about JPY 6 trillion level of the investment so far. But at the same time, while we make a decision on investment, we also are very much focused on the financial policy of loan to value. And so with those investments, our loan to value are 20.6%, cash position JPY 3.8 trillion. Loan to value as of today, this morning, less than 20%. It's about 19%-ish.
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Now, let me walk you through the consolidated results. First, you can see net sales, gain on investment, income before income tax, all increased. So FY 2025 is a good year in terms of performance. By the quarter, in terms of gain or loss on investment and net income, in the third quarter, about JPY 300 billion of gain on investment. You may think it goes up and down. But if you look at the last four quarters, we posted gain, even-
... in the range of seven quarters, we posted a loss only in the first one quarter, but remaining six quarters, we posted a gain. So all in all, we are seeing growth again. So our investment strategy is bearing fruit and represented in this way. So if you go deeper into gain or loss on investment, in the third quarter and the second quarter, both, the huge increase of OpenAI's fair value contributed a lot. That means our decision on investment was successful. Looking at the second quarter, for example, fair value of OpenAI is represented in the lighter blue, which is big, but also other investment posted about JPY 1.3 trillion of gain. In the third quarter, however, we lost other investment by JPY 346 billion or so, but it included in temporary loss of listed companies.
But all in all, we recorded a positive number. And like I said, huge contribution to our bottom line is OpenAI. If you look at the valuation for the last 12 months or so, when we started investment, valuation was about $150 billion. In March 2025, or this fiscal year, we decided to invest as much as $30 billion. Back then, the valuation was $260 billion. On that valuation, we made investment at $30 billion, and as of October, or just thre months ago, the valuation increased to $500 billion. It's not only we are seeing this as OpenAI's valuation, but, from the third evaluator's perspective, also OpenAI's valuation is around $500 billion. And OpenAI's leadership in AI sector and offerings, a lot of service offerings are showing this kind of high valuation.
Talking about investment gain on OpenAI, the green bar is investment cost. At the end of the second quarter of 2025, cumulative investment gain was $19.8 billion, and in the third quarter, we added $23 billion from the perspective of investment. So as of December end, the black portion is investment cost, which is about $34.6 billion. And on top of that, the gain in FY 2024 and recorded in second quarter and the third in 2025, total, we are looking at investment gain of $54 billion. So since inception or since the start of investment, the investment gain for FY 2025 is $4.2 billion. Now, key indicators. Net asset value, or NAV, which is the most important indicator as an investment company.
As of December 31, NAV was about JPY 31 billion, but recently, it went up to JPY 33 billion. Loan to value as of December end, at 20%, but now or recently, 19%. In cash position, back then, JPY 3.8 trillion, and now we have a little bit more than JPY 3.8 trillion recently. We keep this level of indicators while maintaining discipline in making investment. And if you look back the history of NAV, as you can see, our asset value is and has been stable, and our loan to value is shown on the slide, recently less than 20%. So as you can see, for the last four, five years, we have been maintaining the safe LTV level, which means-
... even though we have made a huge investment in the last nine months or so, yet we maintained financial policy in a very disciplined manner. That's the core message I want to deliver to you. Cash position. Our policy is to make sure that we have cash position well over the worth, a bond redemption for two years. Again, as you can see, we have been maintaining about JPY 3 trillion-JPY 4 trillion level. Vision Fund. When you look at the Vision Fund gain or loss on investments, roughly speaking, SoftBank overall gain and loss investments, movement is about in line with this movements. When you look at the breakdown of the gain or loss, Vision Fund 1 for this quarter, we had a negative numbers here, mainly from the public portfolio companies.
So it's about $3,800 million, primarily due to Coupang. As you may also aware that, that there, due to the data leakage, their share price has gone down. But at the same time, for this company, Coupang, we are convinced with their business fundamentals, also doing pretty well in their operations. So very much expect their further recovery of their business, share, and the share price. On your right-hand side, Vision Fund 2 and Latam and others, we have a large positive number here. A big contribution from OpenAI and other new investments in a couple of years before, that their market has already been growing as well.
So now you see the Vision Fund 2 valuation has been growing quarter by quarter. In total, we've maintained our positive numbers. So I said that the seven wins over one loss I mentioned earlier, and actually the cumulative gain has been increasing. So we've been having a little bit of a difficult time, but at the same time, now that we've been able to show the good recovery in total, and after this, we are looking at the very exciting late-stage portfolio companies, and that is something that we believe is going to be another good contributor for our gain on investments. And these are the those exciting late-stage portfolio companies that I mentioned earlier. So on your left-hand side, we do have a public listing track record.
So in total, 60 listings since inception, and in this third quarter, Lenskart, Meesho, those two made newly listed. On your right-hand side are the exciting late-stage portfolio of companies. So December 8 end last year, our total fair value was at $90 billion. And you can see the logos below. There are companies which already made the filings for IPO, which includes PayPay in Japan. Also, Klook has already made the filing for IPO. On your right-hand side, there are other late-stage companies which we can expect the good exit or the good IPOs. So that includes OpenAI, ByteDance, Fanatics, Revolut, Oyo, Yanolja. So those are the exciting other late-stage portfolio companies.
So those, we are closely looking at those and monitoring those companies so that we'll be able to improve our investment performance of Vision Fund. As I mentioned earlier, there are two listings in the third quarter, which include Lenskart. So, eyewear, glasses. So from the design to manufacturing and sales is done by this company, and the performance is doing pretty well. MOIC, 4.8x in growth and also share price since its IPO, it is making a good increase. Another one was Meesho. This is an e-commerce marketplace in India to democratize commerce by connecting consumers with small and micro sellers. There are some ups and downs in share price, but in total, they are showing a good increase in share price since the IPO and investment return.
Two of them, coincidentally, are both Indian companies, and they are doing pretty good progress. And also like to touch on Paytm a little bit. They are making quite a smooth and great progress so far, exceeding 72 million users already. And I would say, Paytm is used by more than one in two people in Japan, and two out of three smartphone users in Japan. So as a payment platform that Paytm is playing in Japan, KPIs are also showing pretty good. GMV on your left-hand side, in nine months period, JPY 14 trillion. So if you annualize, I believe that the number can be expected close to 20, and also 24% year-on-year increase, and EBITDA, 83% increase year-on-year.
So, financials are also showing a great progress so far. So sometime in the future, we believe we'll be able to show you the good valuations when they go public.
Now Arm.
Arm's showing a steady growth. Revenue, they recorded a historic high, up 26% year-on-year. License and other revenue and royalty revenue both has grown steadily. Non-GAAP operating income on quarterly basis is shown here. If you compare to the last quarter and... Sorry, in the same quarter last year and the year before, they have been posting increase. Arm requires R&D investment, that's for sure. While they are investing in R&D, still deliver this kind of operating income, which is great. Arm's technology is penetrating in various areas. For example, in those three sectors: Edge AI, Physical AI, and Cloud AI. Starting from the left, for smartphones and IoT devices, this is Edge AI area, and Samsung announced Exynos 2600, and this is a chip for mobile, Arm v9 and CSS-based one.
In the area of Physical AI, Rivian in the US, their chip for autonomous driving is Arm v9 based. In the cloud AI space, AWS announced they would use Graviton5, which is also Arm v9 based chip. So again, as you can see, Arm v9 chips is penetrating in different areas, and Arm's v9's royalty unit price is twice as much as eight, v8. And CSS-based chips royalty is even higher, so as they go into deeper in different sectors, that would further push Arm's royalty revenue. And Arm announced guidance of a solid growth outlook, and those numbers, I believe, are well over analyst consensus. Revenue, $1.4 billion or 18% year-on-year. That's the outlook for the fourth quarter. Of course, the range is upper than $50 million, but for $1.4 billion is a median number.
The non-GAAP operating expense, $745 million. Non-GAAP fully diluted earnings per share, $0.58. I believe that Arm will definitely deliver those numbers as forecasted. Now, I would like to put a little bit more color on OpenAI. So here, our investment in OpenAI historically, cumulatively, we have invested $34.6 billion so far. Latest, at the third quarter, we made $22.5 billion for the only investment completed in December last year. As a result, ownership in OpenAI Group, PBC, became 11%. There are other major investors, like OpenAI Foundation, which is a nonprofit organization, Microsoft, and others. Their service is steadily very well-performing. So it's about three years since the product launch, but the weekly active user is now exceeding 800 million, and keep growing.
Annual recurring revenue in December 2025, it exceeded $20 billion. Actually, this is 10 times in two years. So I believe this is quite obvious that they are making great progress here. And app downloads, global, and also cumulative since the service launch, about 1.52 billion downloads are made so far. Far bigger than their competitors. And the total number of ChatGPT for Work has already exceeded 7 million accounts. And they are expanding enterprise business as well. They are also releasing new products, one after another. For example, ChatGPT for healthcare or Prism. This is the specialized for scientific writing and collaboration. Codex, this is an agent coding model. Optimized for real-world software development. On your far right, Frontier.
This is an enterprise AI platform that enables organization to build, deploy, operate, and improve AI agents, and we are working on Crystal Intelligence together with OpenAI, and this positioned as a foundational platform to deploy to enterprises in Japan. So with these launches, we believe that they will be able to accelerate their business growth even further. They also started advertising in ChatGPT. It's a bit small letters here, so you may need to pay attention. On your left-hand side, this is smartphone and asking about the dinner. Mexican dish for party, and asking that question to ChatGPT, and ChatGPT answers you with several examples of a good party dishes for Mexican. So one is the steak dish, and the other one is a chicken.
Then in the same screen, in the very bottom of the ChatGPT answer, you will see the advertisement to offer you the good sauce for which matches to these dishes. So if you try to cook a bit... If you prefer a bit hotter dish, it may be good use of such an advertisement. So this is just one example, but they will be able to show several advertisements. So whenever you ask something to ChatGPT, ChatGPT will give you an answer, but at the same time, give an offer which will matches to the answers. So in e-commerce area, I believe this can be good use and very attractive for many of the users. So we believe advertisement model itself can be a good also growth for the revenue.
So this week they are starting this testing advertising in a limited and experimental manner for free and low-price subscription plan in the United States. Also, I'd like to touch on the Stargate. OpenAI, SoftBank Group, and SB Energy, which is our group companies, signed a strategic partnership to advance Stargate back in January 9th this year. So OpenAI, SoftBank, each providing investment into SB Energy, so that this can accelerate the progress of SB Energy business. Data center in Midland County, Texas, is something that we've been working on. 1.2 GW data center, and SB Energy actually selected to build and operate. And also 15-year data center lease agreement signed with OpenAI. As you can see the photos, which is the actual local site. So they are working on the civil works right now.
Once the lands are ready, they will be building and start operations. Next, DigitalBridge. On December 29th, while you are probably on New Year holiday period, we announced acquisition. That was agreement to acquire all outstanding common shares for $3.1 billion, and closing is expected in the second half of 2026. DigitalBridge has been making investment in digital infrastructure. Specifically, their AUM is $108 billion, or JPY 17 trillion, and the portfolio companies are around 45, and well over 100 digital infrastructure investment professionals. It'll be a welcome to get this kind of company in our group. Key portfolio companies include those shown on screen. Vantage, for example, is deploying data centers across countries, and Switch also is very well-known EPC company to deploy data centers.
Towers, J-TOWER, that's a Japanese company, and I believe almost 100% is owned by DigitalBridge. Last but not least, let me remind you our financial strategy. First, financial policy remains unchanged. We maintain loan to value below 25%, and we maintain at least two years' worth of bond redemption in cash. As I said earlier, we are and will be making a lot of investments actively, but this investment should be supported by strong financial policy. In looking at investment amounts, in the last nine months, we have made a huge investment. In the first quarter, $8.3 billion, second quarter, $3.2 billion, in the third quarter, $32.3 billion. Over $40 billion of investment we have made in the last nine months alone, which is around JPY 6 trillion.
Still, however, we keep less than 20% of loan to value, and also we have JPY 3.8 trillion of cash position. Our financial activities are done always with financial policy in mind. The question is: How do we finance? How do we raise capital? We are an investment company, and we relatively use our own balance sheet, and also we are listed company. I think, in that sense, we are in a very unique position globally.
... what we do is first utilize assets held, obviously. We have about JPY 40 trillion of equity valuable holdings. With that, we raise capital. For example, we do margin loan, we use collateral transaction, and it's important to recapitalize portfolio. In that sense, sometimes we sell some assets, and in fact, listed shares, 51% of total holdings are sold, and also even unlisted shares we use as source of capital raise. At the same time, by leveraging appropriately, we can communicate well with the equity investors as well as credit investors in domestic and foreign bonds and loans. We use those markets and also retail bond, corporate bond for institutional investors, and also we loan from Japanese and overseas banks.
Hybrid bonds and loans are also utilized for our capital raise because we can maintain 50% as equity capital. Cash position through those financial activities, we have at this moment JPY 3.8 trillion. Utilizing debt market, what does it mean for investment company like us? Investment company, in terms of general financial activities, we recoup investment and make new investment. That cycle is being run. But recoupment of investment and making investment, there is a time lag. To support that gap, leverage should be used to make sure that we won't miss investment at timing, and we won't miss recoupment of the investment. So the leverage means a lot in terms of filling the gap between recouping previous investment and making new investment. So again, while leveraging, we can maintain a safe investment and even expand investment.
In terms of utilizing assets held more in detail, what we have done is on the left-hand side, you can see we sold T-Mobile shares, Deutsche Telekom shares, and NVIDIA shares, and that equipment is used for a new investment. So we sold $21.3 billion in total, and also we did asset-backed finance of $15.9 billion in total, using shares, using SoftBank shares. We did asset-backed finance, and also we utilized the SoftBank Vision Fund of value to be able to raise $1.9 billion. We are discussing to figure out the best possible option we should take. In terms of utilizing that in the last nine months, that, of course, has to be returned.
Just to remind you, otherwise, you will end up being borrowing forever. You have to return the debt. Sometimes we utilize a bridge loan. Last year, for example, for the first investment in OpenAI or investment in Pear, we structured a huge bridge loan. We, we paid a little bit, and we returned the loan and while keep investing. And we issued senior bonds amount about JPY 1.7 trillion. Of that, JPY 800 billion, sorry, will be redeemed. In one year, about JPY 800 billion-JPY 1 trillion is redeemed, redeemed. And at the time of redemption for investors, we would say thank you very much for supporting us for the last five years, and we have plenty of cash to re-
... give back to them. Investors know we have enough cash position to be redeemed, to be used for redemption. At the time of redemption, we issue or we prepare issuing a new bonds and offer a new bonds to investors. At that time, not only investors who are going to see the redemption timing pretty soon, but also offer an opportunity to new investors. Hybrid bonds, compared to senior or corporate bonds, the volume was small, but still, we issued JPY 0.6 trillion of hybrid bonds. So debt, raising capital, and redemption, and repayment. So in terms of debt market, we communicate well with investors to be able to keep investing and returning back to shareholders.
By utilizing debt well, our share price should go up, then that would satisfy or that would make equity shareholders, equity investors very happy. To summarize, this is executive summary of Q3 of FY 2025, as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. That's all for the third quarter result from myself. Thank you very much for your kind attention. 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 participating online, please access Zoom using the instructions provided in the email sent to you in advance. To avoid audio feedback or looping, we kindly ask that anyone asking a question refrain from connecting to any live streams other than the Zoom webinar.
If you have question, please click the Raise Hand button and wait until you are called on. If you wish to withdraw your question, please click the Lower Hand button. If you are joining the Japanese Zoom, please ask your questions 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. The very front person.
Thank you. MJ from Bloomberg. I have two questions, please. First, is Vision Fund 2, the shares has been transferred to Vision Fund 2. Why was that? And follow-on investment has been speculated, and what is your stance as of today? Thank you.
You said shares. Are you talking about referring to OpenAI shares?
Yes, yes.
Yes, we have transferred OpenAI share to Vision Fund 2, as Vision Fund 2 are the investment vehicle in OpenAI. About two years ago, we started these investment activities. In whether to use a Vision Fund as an investment vehicle, or should we invest from our own balance sheet? There were several discussion points internally, and if this company has a roadmap for investment return, for example, IPO possibly, or any exit or, divestment in the future. So do we have a clear view on the return? That's one of the discussion points. And, another one, is it majority investment or minority investment? That's another discussion point as well. From that sense, OpenAI, there are several other investors. So as a way of the return, making a return, that I believe one of the option can be IPO.
Also, although the amount is large, but our ratio, holding or ownership ratio is just 11%, so this is still the minority investment. As a result, we have decided Vision Fund 2 as an investment vehicle in OpenAI. And for your second question, follow-on investment, I understand, there are financial financing plan by OpenAI, and so on, on newspapers, but there is nothing has been decided or no, no fact that been decided. One more thing about market I would like to ask you. Investment size—not only OpenAI, but the size or the ticket size becoming larger and larger, and $100 billion Vision Fund Size is becoming more and more relevant to this ticket size, I believe. But, as an AI investor, what is the investment pace that you would like to see going forward?
For example, $30 billion or $50 billion every year, or are you going to plan such investments? I believe our financial policy manages that or rules that. So loan to value, how much the loan to value will be. So, we do have a financial policy of 25%, managing less than 25%. And the cash position also needs to be maintained to cover two year equivalent of the bond redemption. So can we keep that or not? So financial policy is not a covenant, so it doesn't mean that we cannot exceed 1% or anything like that. But, as a large investment projects, can we maintain our healthiness and soundness? But even we exceed a little bit above, but still, are we able to return back to a normal case relatively soon?
So those kind of a preparation is necessary. If you only think about financing, there are many options for the finance. So I believe if you only look at the financing point of view, you'll be able to invest. But it doesn't mean that you can invest anything because you can finance or raise money. I believe that we do need to focus, can we maintain the soundness of our financials as a company? That's the kind of important consideration we need to have, which will rule our amount of the investment. Thank you.
Thank you. Any other question?
Yagi from Nikkei Keizai newspaper first. OpenAI's weekly active user exceeds 8 trillion, you said, but in 2025, OpenAI expected over 1 billion active users. And, OpenAI issued a code red because of the threat from competitors, we heard. For SBG as an investment company, what you find it attractive? And, what are they talking about to you as their attractiveness and request for more investment, if, for example?
Well, as an investor, investment in OpenAI, which is public-private entity. Of course, we need to hear from them, what they are doing, based on which we will make a decision. That kind of information includes confidential one between OpenAI and us. The numbers that we present today are all public information and confirmed with OpenAI that it can be disclosed. You mentioned code red. Yeah, we have seen on media, maybe because of a competitor's move, and they maybe sent message internally, take into account of a competitive landscape. I think that's a matter of course. It's fair thing to do. And our financial results and announcement of our financial results, the data set that we can share with you as information based on which we make investment, that's a part of information based on which we make an investment.
OpenAI's technical capability, OpenAI's vision, that's something which is communicated between the senior management, and, that kind of information or communication is not shown, in the numbers like we presented to you. In fact, that kind of confidential data or information or communication might be playing a more important role for us to make an investment. But at this moment, I just appreciate if you could keep watching how OpenAI grows going forward.
Thank you. One more question about the Stargate. In 2026, how much cash out is expected for Stargate? Will cash out for SoftBank Group? Well, if that's the case, of course, it's likely to change, so I cannot tell you exact number. But as we keep saying, Stargate Project is including something that SoftBank Group works on and Oracle works on.
What I mean by saying work on is, we do equity investment, but project itself for that is financed as project finance. So, as in terms of project finance, our size is limited, so the amount investment should not be too huge. That's how much I can say. Any other questions? The second row from the front, in the middle, please.
Suzuki from TV Tokyo. As you announced, the business is doing quite well, but the last year, December, November, share price is declined about 30% or 40%. How do you analyze the current situation of share price? That's my first question. Second is about the investment in OpenAI, and the concentration of OpenAI investment may be concerned by the people. How do you look at that? First of all, the share price itself, actually, I am thinking this is, increasing trend.
When you look at, each respective portfolio may affect a little bit, but the equity market itself and the environment itself is very steadily, growing. So over one years, Japanese equity market as well as U.S. equity market does not have any immediate concern, which may ruin the, the current situations, which is my personal view. If there is any recession in the United States, and if that possibility becomes more clear, then we there may be some, revisiting. But, at this moment, I don't see any such, negative events to coming, happening soon. And because we, invest in wide, wide variety, and unless we have any market crash, and otherwise, we believe. It doesn't mean that we see all of the our support portfolio companies goes down.
So we do have a wide range of the investments, so that we don't concern too much about that. And for your second question regarding concentration in OpenAI, which may be repeating, but myself. But there are still, as a private company, many numbers or many trends are not disclosed or discussed publicly at this moment, which as an investor, we do have a dialogue and also have some information. And there are many communications between the top management, and also their directions or their stories for the future, and also their role or and missions alongside with the AI technology involvement, involvements. So something similar to other many Hyperscalers.
We assume OpenAI will be able to lead this industry and this era, and we are quite convinced, so that we are making an investment in this company. Thank you. Any other question?
Asamura from Nikkei Business. About OpenAI, private entity, because of that, there is an information that is not disclosed yet. But from people like us, we could be concerned that you depend too much on OpenAI, but you still have kind of a hidden critical information that makes you very confident. While hidden or not, in the private equity world, whether big or small, you need to make an investment with confidence, even though there is undisclosed information. The question is, what do you want to look at when you make a decision on the investment? Venture capitals, what are they looking at when they make an investment? Let's say, SoftBank, when SoftBank made investment in Alibaba, what did we see?... I asked Masa, and Masa said he decided in five minutes after seeing Jack Ma's eyes.
There are a lot of private companies that still have founders, and the founder's leadership, and founder's capability could be the important source of information based on which venture capitals would make a investment. Through our long-term experience of investment, we made a decision to make an investment in OpenAI, and we want to provide them a full support. Thank you. Question about financing. The equity is going up globally, and you raise capital in the debt market as well. So since the stock price is so high, I don't know if there are enough investors who intend to buy your bonds. Well, looking at groups of investors, some equity investors explore ups and downs, and other investors may want to have a confidence of return, fixed return. These kind of investments are in the credit market.
I think in a sense, they are on a different end of the spectrum, and they're both there. There are always credit investors, and there are always equity investors. From SoftBank's perspective, if you do equity finance, for example, of course, there are equity investors who want to buy our shares. But when you look at investment cost, that could be a huge... Sorry, financing costs would be very high, so that's why we want to utilize both markets, and also we want to raise capitals based on our balance sheet as well. Any other questions? Second row from the front. Shimada from TV Asahi.
So Akazawa, Minister of Finance, Mr. Akazawa, is visiting United States and talking about the first project. And there are discussion that the SoftBank Group are also regarded as a candidate for the first project from the gas turbine power generation plant construction. Doesn't have to be first project, second project is also good. But what is the size? What is the progress of the project? How do you look at it? Is there anything that you'll be able to comment?
I understand Minister Akazawa is visiting United States, but this is the discussion between two governments, between Japan and United States. So there are nothing I can make as an comment from my position. But this will be the project of the collaboration between Japan and United States. And if we can be picked up as a one of the projects, we will be very honored, so we would like to patiently looking at the situation. Thank you. Any other question from the floor?
Makino from NHK. A data center in the U.S. Switch is an operator of data center in the U.S., and there was a media report that you consider acquiring Switch. But later you announced the acquisition of DigitalBridge officially. So about potential acquisition of Switch, do you have any comment on that?
Also, looking at data center business in the U.S., what kind of growth potential you see, and any other possibility that you make more investment in U.S. data center sector? Thank you.
About Switch, the speculation of acquisition of Switch, that kind of a report I saw here and there, but the fact is, there's nothing that we can make an announcement about, Switch. And about the DigitalBridge, through the fund, DigitalBridge owns 50% of Switch. And Switch we know is a great company, and on business side, we have, we think that we have an opportunity to communicate with Switch about data center business in the U.S. There is media coverage or discussion like, data center business is bubble or part of AI bubble.
Of course, data centers are built here and there, and whether it's overheated or not, the question is: Who will be users of those data centers? Hyperscalers are in great need of data centers. That can report you can often see in the media. In order for AI to grow further, computing power is needed, and the data center capacity at the moment is not enough to support growing AI's computing, and that kind of computing is needed immediately. So from myself, from SoftBank's perspective, data center business is not a part of AI bubble narrative, because shortage of supply is real. So as business sector, investing in such a sector is valued and fair. From risk perspective, I don't know risk is the right word or not, but technical innovation can be a risk.
By that, what I mean is, what kind of impact that technical evolution could have on data centers? Maybe some technology may come to provide a capacity without using data centers, and also electricity with some new technology coming up, maybe drastic, paradigm shift may happen. So investment in physical assets has such kind of risk, posed by further technical evolution. Any other question from the floor? So that concludes, Q&A sessions. Thank you very much.
This concludes the SoftBank Group Corp earnings results announcement for nine months period, ended December 31st, 2025 . The video footage of this meeting will be distributed on demand from our corporate website.
Thank you very much again for joining the SoftBank Group Corp earnings results announcement for nine-month period ended December 31st, 2025