Business
AI shift: SoftBank sells Nvidia stake for $5.8 billion; focuses on OpenAI after tripling first-half profit – The Times of India
Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp has sold its stake in US chipmaker Nvidia for $5.8 billion, signalling a strategic pivot toward artificial intelligence investments, particularly in OpenAI, the company said on Tuesday, AP reported. The tech conglomerate also reported that its profit nearly tripled in the first half of the current fiscal year, driven by strong returns from its Vision Funds.The Tokyo-based firm said the Nvidia shares were sold in October as part of Chairman Masayoshi Son’s broader plan to redirect resources toward next-generation AI ventures. SoftBank’s net profit for the April–September period surged to about 2.5 trillion yen (roughly $13 billion), while sales rose 7.7 per cent year-on-year to 3.7 trillion yen ($24 billion).SoftBank’s earnings tend to fluctuate sharply due to its exposure to multiple high-growth and high-risk ventures. However, its tech-heavy portfolio has seen a rebound in 2025 amid the global AI boom.Earlier this year, Son joined US President Donald Trump, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Oracle’s Larry Ellison in announcing Project Stargate — a proposed $500 billion mega-initiative to develop AI infrastructure and computing power.SoftBank has already invested tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI and plans to expand AI services in Japan through the collaboration. The sale of its Nvidia stake marks a deliberate reallocation of capital — locking in gains from Nvidia’s meteoric rise while freeing funds for direct AI ventures.Nvidia recently became the world’s first $5 trillion company, fuelled by soaring demand for AI chips. The company has also announced a $100 billion investment in OpenAI to build at least 10 gigawatts of new AI data centres to boost computing capacity.While SoftBank no longer holds Nvidia stock, it maintains ties through various portfolio companies that use Nvidia technology in AI and robotics. SoftBank also holds stakes in Arm Holdings and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), both of which have benefited from the AI-driven surge in chip demand.SoftBank’s stock has nearly doubled over the past year, rising 2 per cent in Tokyo trading on Tuesday. Nvidia shares slipped 1.3 per cent in premarket trading after climbing 5.8 per cent on Monday.The company’s latest move cements Masayoshi Son’s aggressive shift toward becoming a global powerhouse in artificial intelligence — a bet that echoes his early vision for the future of computing.
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
Billionaire Barry Sternlicht, chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, is a legendary, legacy real estate investor. Brendan Wallace is an entrepreneur who co-founded Fifth Wall, a venture capital firm investing in property technology and decarbonizing real estate. The pair first met in the gym. Now, Wallace can say Sternlicht is a mentor – as well as a Fifth Wall investor – and Sternlicht jokes that Wallace is his trainer.
Together they gave CNBC Property Play a rare glimpse into how old-school commercial real estate investing is pivoting to a new tech-driven world order and how that new world order still relies on lessons learned in the past.
Here are some of the highlights from the conversation, edited for clarity and length:
On CRE investing
Sternlicht: We endured a 500 basis point, fairly rapid increase in rates, and most people who were invested had to pay some price for that, whether the yields on property went up or they weren’t properly hedged. Your costs went up, your expenses, and they drained a lot of cash flow from assets that might have gone into fixing the assets up. That’s behind us now, and there’s no doubt that interest rates are going down. … In May of next year, Jerome [Powell] will be out [as Federal Reserve Chairman], and nobody’s getting that job without agreeing to lower rates.
I think they should lower rates. I think inflation that we’re seeing is tariff related. It will continue. It’ll get worse, probably, in the fourth quarter, when the new inventories hit the shelves and the tariffs can no longer be ignored.
Wallace: The rate increases that Barry was mentioning, those impacted prop tech definitionally, because all tech companies, all loss-making businesses, rerated all at the same time. And at the same time, the demand from commercial real estate stopped.
I would say an overlay on top of it was also that a big part of where real estate companies were investing in the last four years was around decarbonization efforts, so trying to conform to new carbon neutrality laws … and anticipating this kind of wave of decarbonization. And I feel like with [President Donald] Trump‘s election, it kind of felt like they got a hall pass, certainly for four years.
On AI and data centers
Sternlicht: We’ve probably got $20 billion dedicated to [the data center] space. I think it’s a different issue than you think. Most of us don’t build until we get a hyperscaler lease. So we get the lease from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Oracle. What we’re watching now is the credit worthiness of the tenant, and particularly Oracle, because Oracle is doing all these deals back-ended to [ChatGPT], and Chat is a startup that doesn’t make money and requires hundreds of billions of dollars to grow to the scale they want to be.
There’s no question AI is going to change the entire world and do it much faster than anything we’ve ever seen before, much faster than the internet, certainly faster than the Industrial Revolution. That is terrifying to me. I mean, I’m not so complacent. I look at … how we spend money, and what I can do with AI agents that I do with humans today, and it’s terrifying for the people. I think we have to let people go, right? Jobs of 15 people can be done with a chatbot that costs me $36 a month.
Wallace: I was trying to trace all these pretty Byzantine and somewhat incestuous commitments that are happening between the large tech companies, between the digital infrastructure providers, and it’s actually very hard to trace who’s going to ultimately pay for it all, but ultimately it has to be paid for in the economy.
The way to just acid test whether it makes sense is if you looked at the amount of AI compute that will be required to fill all the data centers that are in production or have been announced to go into production, and then you assume that the tech companies have to make some profit on top of that to justify it, which they’re not today, but let’s assume they have to. Take any margin you want, assume that’s the revenue that’s then therefore flowing to large language models and AI. What percent of U.S. GDP would that be today if you ran that math? My fear is that it might be like 120% of U.S. GDP.
On their next bets
Sternlicht: We’re heavily investing in Europe, actually. Not here. They’ve done the stimulus package. They have low rates. They don’t have, really, inflation. They don’t have tariffs. It’s amazing, having returned from Europe and the Middle East, I can buy everything cheaper in Europe than I can here now.
Wallace: New York City. People overestimate the durability of these political vibe shifts. Within two years of electing Trump, we elected [Zohran] Mamdani to run New York, and I just think these things move dialectically. Over the long term, New York is going to be super valuable. So if I were a betting person, I didn’t have to make a return in the next four years, I would bet on New York.
Grocery price inflation has slowed in some good news for consumers as retailers ramp up festive deals ahead of Christmas, figures show.
Supermarket prices were still 4.7% higher than a year ago in October, but this was down from September’s 5.2%, according to market research firm Worldpanel by Numerator, formerly Kantar.
Spending on deals climbed by 9.4% to just under 30% of all grocery purchases, while spending on full-priced goods rose by just 1.8%.
Fraser McKevitt, head of retail and consumer insight at Worldpanel, said: “Christmas ads are hitting our screens and the race to the big day is on in the supermarket sector.
“Retailers are very alive to the financial struggles that some households are facing, not least ahead of this year’s Budget.
“They’re eager to show how they’re offering shoppers value for money, putting the emphasis on price cuts rather than multibuy offers.”
Despite tightening belts, Worldpanel is predicting a new sales record for retailer premium lines this year, suggesting it has the potential to hit more than £1 billion in December.
Mr McKevitt said: “It’s important to remember that shoppers often look for great value and quality, not just the cheapest product.
“At Christmas especially people want to treat themselves and throughout the cost-of-living crisis we’ve seen them turning to retailers’ premium own label lines to do that in a way that’s more affordable.”
Online remains the fastest growing part of the grocery market and spending on home delivery rose by 11% over the month.
On average, households who use online grocery now buy three shops a month.
Ocado posted a new record share for the 12 weeks to November 2, hitting 2.1%, as it remained the fastest-growing grocer for the third month in a row.
Tesco and Lidl both added half a percentage point of share to their market positions, with Lidl boosting sales by 10.8% over the 12 weeks to take its share to 8.2% and Tesco now accounting for 28.2% of the market with a sales increase of 5.9%.
Sainsbury’s achieved growth of 5.2% to gain market share of 15.7%.
Pine Labs IPO Day 3 GMP, Subscription Status, Price, Allotment & Listing Date: Fintech firm Pine Labs witnessed the last day of its Rs 3,899.91-crore initial public offering (IPO). The IPO, whose price was fixed at Rs 210-221 apiece, has been today, November 11, at 5 pm. The IPO received a 2.48x subscription on Day 3, 13 per cent subscription on the first day of bidding on Friday and 55 per cent on Day 2 on Monday.
However, its grey market premium has further fallen to nil, compared with 1.81% on Monday.
The company raised Rs 1,754 crore from anchor investors on Thursday, a day before the IPO.
The anchor book saw participation from 71 funds, including Franklin Templeton, Nomura, Morgan Stanley Asia Singapore Pte Ltd, Amundi Funds New Silk Road, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, BNP Paribas and Eastspring Investments, according to a circular uploaded on BSE’s website.
Pine Labs IPO GMP Today
According to market observers, unlisted shares of Pine Labs are currently trading at Rs 221 apiece in the grey market, which is zero premium (or GMP) over the upper IPO price of Rs 221, indicating flat or negative listing for the company.
The GMP was Rs 5.43% on Friday and nearly 16% a few days ago.
The GMP is based on market sentiments and keeps changing. ‘Grey market premium’ indicates investors’ readiness to pay more than the issue price.
Pine Labs IPO: Opening, Closing, Allotment, Listing Dates
The IPO was opened on November 7 and will be closed on November 11. Its allotment will be finalised on November 12, while the stock listing is scheduled to take place on November 14 on both BSE and NSE.
Pine Labs IPO: Should You Apply?
Brokerages have given a mixed response to the Pine Labs IPO, with views split between long-term optimism and near-term caution. While some see strong potential in its business model, others find the valuation steep given its loss-making status.
Cautious Voices
Arihant Capital advised investors to avoid the issue, citing losses at the PAT level and high employee and technology costs. Swastika Investmart also suggested avoiding the IPO for now, calling it “aggressively valued” with limited short-term visibility. Angel One rated it neutral, noting that the company remains loss-making and trades at a premium to peers on an EV/EBITDA basis, while warning of risks like regulatory uncertainty and intense competition.
Long-Term Optimism
On the other hand, SBI Securities gave a ‘subscribe for long-term’ rating, citing Pine Labs’ strong network of 9.8 lakh merchants and Rs 276 trillion market opportunity by FY29. It said the firm is well placed to deliver profitable growth. IDBI Capital also recommended ‘subscribe for long-term’, highlighting Pine Labs’ Rs 11,424.97 billion transaction volume in FY25 and its strategic acquisitions that strengthen its digital infrastructure ecosystem.
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