Masayoshi Son, one of tech’s most–watched investors, is making a gigantic bet – and it’s sending shivers through Wall Street.
The Japanese billionaire and SoftBank founder quietly sold off all his Nvidia shares and most of his stake in T-Mobile last month, unloading roughly $15 billion worth of stock in total.
The move by Son – dubbed the Warren Buffett of tech investment – has rattled traders already spooked by a growing chorus of warnings about the overheated AI market.
Among the skeptics is Michael Burry, the Big Short investor who predicted the 2008 financial crash. Last week, it emerged he has now made a huge bet that Nvidia’s share price will fall.
By midday Tuesday, the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 0.8 percent, while Nvidia’s stock slid more than 3 percent. Both recovered in the afternoon, but are still down significantly from a week ago when Burry’s bet was revealed.
It reverses some of Monday’s gains on optimism that the end of the government shutdown would help boost American spending.
Son’s sale is being read as a warning sign that the AI boom – the same one that has powered record stock gains for companies including Nvidia, Microsoft, and Palantir – might finally be wobbling.
SoftBank says the move is not about losing faith in Nvidia or T-Mobile. Instead, it is about freeing up cash for a massive new wager: a $34.7 billion investment in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
Masayoshi Son, the leader of SoftBank, revealed that the company sold all of its stake in Nvidia and most of its T-Mobile shares. The combined sell-off is worth $15 billion
The funds will also help bankroll a planned $500 billion network of data centers in the US, a move that also suggests belief in the future of AI.
Still, the timing has spooked traders already wary of an overheated market.
AI stocks have skyrocketed this year as companies pour billions into data centers, chips, and new models.
Since ChatGPT’s debut in 2022, tech executives have promised that generative AI will cut costs and reinvent the economy. But the payoff has yet to arrive.
In August, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology report found that 95 percent of companies investing in generative AI are seeing ‘zero return’.
That study triggered market jitters – and led to Wall Street’s worst week since April.
Big-name investors are starting to express worries, including Burry, who has also bet against Palantir.
And JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently warned that the US economy could be crawling with ‘cockroaches,’ pointing to the recent bankruptcies of auto lenders Tricolor and First Brands as early signs of trouble.
Son, however, is not backing down.
Investors have been expressing more worries about the state of America’s AI spending, especially after an extensive MIT analysis found that corporations are losing money on their ventures
Nvidia’s stock has lost more than three percent by mid-day Tuesday
His track record includes both massive wins and infamous busts — from early bets on Alibaba to a $16 billion disaster with WeWork.
The SoftBank chief is often compared to Buffett in CNBC and Wall Street Journal articles for his influence and scale, but the comparison stops there.
Buffett builds slowly and holds for decades; Son swings big and often.
And this latest swing — out of Nvidia and straight into OpenAI — might be his riskiest yet.
SoftBank didn’t immediately respond to the Daily Mail’s request for comment.