SoftBank swings to profit, eyes AI boost

STORY: Softbank swung to a quarterly profit on Monday from a year earlier.

The Japanese tech giant reported a net profit of just over $2.1 billion for the January to March period.

That compared with a loss in the same period a year earlier.

Investors were excited by the potential for an AI-driven future.

That boosted the valuation of the company's top asset, British chip design firm Arm Holdings.

Softbank itself has not yet been a big player in generative AI models like ChatGPT.

But the results suggest Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto was onto something in February.

When he said the tech investor was returning to a 'growth trajectory'.

Monday's results mark the second straight quarter of profit for SoftBank.

But the company stayed in the red for the full year.

Its Vision Fund investment unit booked a loss of around $369 million, after three consecutive quarters of profit.