SoftBank Group Corp. (9984) Q3 FY2026 Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the SoftBank Group Corp. Earnings Results Announcement for the 9-month period ended December 31, 2025. Now we would like to start and also would like to introduce today's participants. From left, we have Yoshimitsu Goto, Board Director and CFO; Kazuko Kimiwada, Corporate Officer, Senior Vice President and CAO; Navneet Govil, Executive Partner and CFO, SB Investor Advisers and SB Global Advisors. 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 your time today. This is Goto speaking. This January, I had a knee surgery. And currently, I have a bit difficulty to keep standing. But for the next earning, 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 a bit bad knees and made me difficult to walk straight and try to fix that when I was younger. So that's why that I come to this. So I appreciate my parents who born me in a healthy manner, but this was my first ever surgery and being admitted in hospital in my life. And when I am on the wheelchair, I realize many things which I never experienced, which I never imagined over 6 years in my life. So it is quite lessons that I've been learning. And I've been admitted in the hospital for 2 weeks, and alcohol-free for 2 weeks, that was also another first time in life. And I lost 8 kilograms in weight, which is a good news also. But that's it. That's only for my things, but I would like to come into the earnings results announcement, and I will present while I remain seated, very much sorry about that, and I hope you understand. So this time, agenda for the earnings to be the #1 ASI platform provider. So what is platform, I believe, is always a question for you and for us, too. At the General Shareholders' Annual Meetings last year, Masa presented that we would like to be ASI platform provider. And Masa was also asked and he answered, we could say a core pillar of the industry that platform is. This can be also a base for the many things, and 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 system, which was wholesale. And 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 started the broad media and many things were put it on to the platform since then. So that's a similar thing that we are doing. After year 2000, Internet era doomed platform or platform provider became more important, even more important. And now we are entering into AI and headed towards ASI platform provider is the one that we would like to be. And we are steadily laying the groundwork right now. I don't play a game of goal, but we are laying the ground. In the past 3 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. And to advance target, we have also a 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. For chip, we completed the acquisition of $6.5 billion completed. These are the events that happened in the third quarter. And DigitalBridge, which is the digital infrastructure investment company, and we announced this company's acquisition with $3.1 billion 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 3 years ago, if you see by business segment, portfolio for ASI was about limited to pretty much Arm and some robots 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 the highlights for third quarter 2025. First was the completed follow-on investment in OpenAI, increasing ownership to about 11%. And net income 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 3 quarter before, this is minus JPY 2.4 trillion. But 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 very much focus on the financial policy of loan-to-value. And so with those investments, loan-to-value at 20.6% cash position, JPY 3.8 trillion. Loan-to-value, as of today, this morning, less than 20%, it's about 19-ish percent. 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 '25 is a good year in terms of performance. By the quarter, in terms of gross loss on investment and net income, in the third quarter, about JPY 300 billion of gain (sic) [ loss ] on investment. You may think it goes up and down. But if you look at the last 4 quarter, we posted gain even in the range of 7 quarters, we posted a loss only the 1 quarter, but remaining 6 quarters, we posted a gain. So all in all, we are seeing growing gain. 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 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 a 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 3 months ago, the valuation increased to $500 billion. It's not only we are seeing this is OpenAI's valuation, but from the third evaluator's perspective, also OpenAI's valuation is around JPY 500 billion. And OpenAI's leadership in AI sector and offering -- a lot of service offerings are showing this kind of high valuation. And 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 prospect 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 $31 billion. But recently, it went up to JPY 33 trillion. Loan-to-value as of December end, 20%, but now or recently, 19%-ish. And 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 loan-to-value is shown on this slide, recently, less than 20%. So as you can see, for the last 4, 5 years, we have been maintaining the safe LTV level, which means even though we have made huge investment in the last 9 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 bond redemption for 2 years. Again, as you can see, we have been maintaining about JPY 3 trillion to JPY 4 trillion level. So Vision Fund. So 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 these movements. And 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 due to -- primarily due to Coupang. As you may also aware that due to the data leakage, the share price has gone down. But at the same time, for this company, Coupang, we are convinced with the business fundamentals also doing pretty well in the operations. So very much expect the further recovery of the business 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 mark has already been growing as well. So now you see the Vision Fund 2 valuation has been growing quarter-by-quarter. On total, we maintained our positive numbers. So I said that 7 wins over 1 lose, 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 gain on investments. And these are 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 2 made newly listed. On your right-hand side, are the exciting late-stage portfolio or companies and so December end last year, our total fair value was at $90 billion. And you can see the logos below. There are companies, which already made filings for IPO, which includes PayPay in Japan. Also Clerk has already made a 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 are -- 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 that there are 2 listing 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 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 down in share price, but in total, they are showing a good increase in share price since the IPO and the investment return, 2 of them are coincidentally are both Indian company, and they are doing a pretty good progress. And I'd also like to touch on PayPay a little bit. They are making quite a smooth and great progress so far exceeding 72 million users already. And I would say PayPay is used by more than 1 in 2 people in Japan and 2 out of 3 smartphone users in Japan. So as a payment platform that PayPay is playing in Japan, KPIs are also showing pretty good. GMV on your left-hand side, in 9 months period, JPY 14 trillion. So if you annualize, I believe that the number can be expected close to JPY 20 trillion 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 that we believe we'll be able to show you the good valuations when they go public. Now Arm. Arm is showing steady growth. Revenue, they recorded the historic high, up 26% year-on-year. License and other revenue and royalty revenue, both has grown steadily. Non-GAAP operating income on a quarterly basis is shown here. If you compare to the last quarter and -- sorry, the last -- 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 3 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 the chip for mobile, Armv9 and CSS-based one. In the area of physical AI, Rivian in the U.S. Their chip for autonomous driving is ArmV9-based. In the cloud AI space, AWS announced they would use Graviton5, which is also ArmV9-based chip. So again, as you can see, ArmV9 chips is penetrating in different areas and ArmV9's royalty unit price is twice as much as 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 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 $1.4 billion is a median number. And non-GAAP operating expense, $745 million, non-GAAP fully diluted earnings per share, $0.58. And 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 follow-on 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 NP -- nonprofit organization, Microsoft and others. And their service is steadily very well performing. So it's about 3 years since the product launch, but weekly active user is now exceeding 800 million and keep growing. Annual recurring revenue in December 2025, it exceeded $20 billion. Actually, this is 10x in 2 years. So I believe this is quite obvious that they are making a 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 the agent coding model, optimizing -- 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 position 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. So 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. ChatGPT answers you with several examples of good party dishes for Mexican. So one is the steak dish and the other one is chicken. Then in the same screen in the very bottom of the ChatGPT answer, you will see the advertisement to offer you the good source 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 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 9 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 Milam County, Texas is something that we've been working on, 1.2 gigawatt 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. And once the lands are ready, there will be building and start operations. Next, DigitalBridge. On December 29, while you are probably on New Year holiday period, we announced acquisition. And 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. The AUM is $108 billion or JPY 17 trillion and the portfolio companies are around 45 and well over 100 digital infrastructure investment professionals. And it will be welcome to get this kind of company in our group. Key portfolio companies include those on shown screen. Vantage, for example, deploying data centers across countries and Switch also is a very well-known EPC company to deploy data centers. And towers, JTOWER, 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 2 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. Looking at investment amounts, in the last 9 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 9 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. And 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 a 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 value holdings. With that, we raised capital, for example, we do margin loan, we use color 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 a source of capital raise. At the same time, by leveraging appropriately, we can communicate well with equity investors as well as credit investors and 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. And 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 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 new investment. So we sold $21.3 billion in total. And also, we did asset-backed finance of $15.9 billion in total using Arm shares, using SoftBank shares. We did asset-backed finance. And also, we utilized SoftBank Vision Fund 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 9 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 Ampere, we structured a huge bridge loan. We repaid a little bit. And we return the loan and while keep investing. And we issued senior bonds amount about JPY 1.7 trillion. Of that, JPY 800 billion will be redeemed. In 1 year, about JPY 800 billion to JPY 1 trillion is redeemed. And at the time of redemption, for investors, we would say thank you very much for supporting us for the last 5 years. And we have plenty of cash to get back to them. And investors know we have enough cash position to be redeemed -- to be used for redemption. And at the time of redemption, we issue -- we prepare issuing new bonds and offer 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 that 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 the executive summary of Q3 of FY 2025, as I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. That's all for the third quarter results 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. [Operator Instructions] Now we would like to take questions from the floor. The very front person.

MJ from Bloomberg. I have 2 questions, please. First, is Vision Fund 2 -- the shares has been transferred to Vision Fund 2. Why it 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 shares to Vision Fund 2 as Vision Fund 2 are the investment vehicle in OpenAI. About 2 years ago, we started these investment activities. Whether to use Vision Fund as an investment vehicle or should we invest from our own balance sheet. There are several discussion points internally. And if this company has a road map 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 1 of the discussion point. 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 return -- making a return that I believe 1 of the option can be IPO. And also, although the amount is large, but our holding ownership ratio is just 11%. So this is through 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 financing plans by OpenAI and so on newspapers, but there is nothing has been decided or no fact has been decided.

One more thing about market, I would like to ask you. So investment size, not only OpenAI, but the size of the ticket size is becoming larger and larger. And JPY 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, JPY 30 billion or JPY 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 2-year equivalent of the bond redemption. So can we keep that or not? So financial policy is not the covenant. So it doesn't mean that we cannot exceed $0.01 or anything like that. But as a large investment projects, can we maintain our healthiness and soundness? But even we step a little bit above, but still, are we able to return back to normal case relatively soon. So those kind of 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 our soundness of our financials as a company, that's the kind of important consideration we need to have, which will grow our amount of the investment.

Any other question?

[ Yagi ] from Nihon Keizai Newspaper. First, OpenAI's weekly active users exceeds 8 trillion you said. But in 2025. OpenAI expected over 1 billion active users and OpenAI issued code red because of the threat from competitors, we heard. For SBG as an investment company, what you find attractive? And what are they talking about to you as their attractiveness and requests for more investment, for example?

Well, as an investor, investment in OpenAI, which is 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 confirm with OpenAI that it can be disclosed. You mentioned code red. We have seen on media. Maybe because of competitors' move. And they maybe sent message internally taken into account of competitive landscape. I think that's the matter. Of course, it's a fair thing to do. In 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 goal for us to make an investment. But at this moment, I just appreciate if you could keep watching how OpenAI grows going forward.

One more question about the Stargate. In 2026, how much cash out is expected as Stargate?

Well, cash out as a 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, target 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 in terms of project finance, our size is limited. So the amount of 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 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 an 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 1 year, Japanese equity market as well as U.S. equity market does not have any immediate concern, which may ruin the current situations, which is my personal view. If there is any recession in the United States, and the 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 variety and unless we have any market crush and otherwise, we believe it doesn't mean that we see all of our portfolio companies goes down. So we do have a kind of many -- wide range of the investments. So we don't concern too much about that. And for your second question regarding concentration in OpenAI, which may be repeating 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 investment -- 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 and missions alongside with the AI technology evolvements. So something similar to other many hyperscalers, we assume OpenAI will be able to lead this industry in this era. And we are quite convinced so that we are making an investment in this company. Thank you.

Any other question?

Samura 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 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 5 minutes after seeing Jack Ma's eyes. And there are a lot of private companies that still have founders and the founder's leadership and founders' capability could be an important source of information based on which venture capitals would make an 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. A question about financing. The equity is going up globally. And you raised 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. Looking at groups of investors, some equity investors explore ups and downs and other investors may want to have confidence of return, fixed return. These kind of investments are in the credit market. I think in a sense, they are on the different end of the spectrum, and they are both there. There are always credit investors, and there are always equity investors. From SoftBank's perspective, if we 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 will be very high. So that's why we want to utilize both markets. And also, we want to raise capital 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 the 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. It 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 2 governments between Japan and United States. So there are nothing I can make as a 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 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. 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? And 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?

About Switch, the speculation of acquisition of Switch, that kind of report I saw here and there. But the fact is there is nothing that we can make an announcement about Switch. And about 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 the 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 certain sector is valued and fair. From a 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 the technical evolution could have on data centers. Maybe some technology may come to provide 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 questions from the floor? So that concludes Q&A session. Thank you very much. This concludes the SoftBank Group Corp Earnings Results Announcement for 9 months period ended December 31, 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 9-month period ended December 31, 2025. [Statements in English on this transcript were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]