Softbank, the world's largest tech investor, recorded a loss of 907 billion yen (5.6 billion euros) in the first half of the fiscal year. This is a significant setback for the company, which wanted to return to the profit zone after two loss-making years. The continued weakness of tech stocks and the devaluation of the Japanese currency, yen, are weighing on Softbank's balance sheet.

The company lost four billion euros in the first half of the fiscal year that started in April, solely due to currency losses. A major problem for Softbank is the negative interest rate policy of the Japanese central bank, which leads to a large interest rate difference with other countries and significantly devalues the yen against the dollar. This results in high losses when converting debts into yen.

The bankruptcy of WeWork, in which Softbank was significantly involved, has no impact on the current result, as the investment was already written off. In fact, Softbank was able to record a slight increase in the investment sector, mainly thanks to the successful IPO of the British chip designer Arm.

SoftBank's CFO, Yoshimitsu Goto, described Arm's IPO as a positive milestone for the company. Through the IPO, SoftBank was able to raise 5.1 billion dollars and the value of Arm in the stock market rose to 55 billion euros - a significant profit for the company, which had invested 30 billion euros in the purchase in 2016. Arm is now not only known for mobile chips, but also for computer chips and artificial intelligence (AI) applications.

Softbank's successful investments reveal that founder Masahiro Son's risky bets on mega start-ups are paying off. Since 2017, the company has invested over 100 billion euros in start-ups, primarily through the Softbank Vision Fund. The successful IPO of Arm now gives Son new room to maneuver to finance further AI companies. A potential investment could be OpenAI, a company that became globally known with its AI application ChatGPT. Arm's share package is intended to help realize new visions of investor Son.

For the full year, Softbank's interim balance is a bad sign. In 2022, the company closed with a deficit of around 6.6 billion euros, despite achieving an operating profit of 1.8 billion euros in the first half of the year. The losses this year show that Softbank is still suffering from the poor performance of tech stocks and the depreciation of the national currency.

But the successful IPO of Arm gives the company new momentum and allows it to go on the offensive again. The investment legend Son is now looking for new promising AI companies to expand his portfolio.