SoftBank bought $4 billion worth of NVIDIA shares

After being out of office for the better part of the week there are a lot of stories I need to catch up with, I'll try to publish some of the more interesting ones this weekend. As you may know, NVIDIA's shares have more than tripled over the last year as the company keeps delivering strong growth and investors have high expectations of the company's prospects in the self-driving car market as well as the broader AI industry.

One of the big NVIDIA stories earlier this week was the news that Japan's SoftBank has quietly build up a whopping $4 billion stake in NVIDIA. This represents 4.9 percent of NVIDIA's outstanding shares and makes SoftBank the fourth largest shareholder of the GPU designer.

The Japanese company, which just closed its Vision Fund, disclosed it owned an unspecified amount of Nvidia stock when it announced $93 billion of commitments to the technology investment fund on Saturday. A holding of 4.9 percent, just under the amount that would require a regulatory disclosure in the U.S., would be worth about $4 billion.

Bloomberg says the NVIDIA share purchase fits in the strategy of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son to become one of the largest investors in technology:

A stake in Nvidia fits with SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son’s plans to become the biggest investor in technology over the next decade, with bets on emerging trends such as artificial intelligence. Under its founder, Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia has become one of the leaders of the charge by chipmakers to provide the underpinnings of machine intelligence in everything from data centers to automobiles.

NVIDIA shares gained even more yesterday as sources close to SoftBank indicated it may raise its holding in NVIDIA over time, and that this is a long-term investment:

The firm would raise its holding over time and begin to work more closely with Nvidia, the people said, asking not to be identified because the deliberations are private.

“While we don’t comment on rumors about our investments, we consider ourselves long-term partners to companies, whether private or public,” SoftBank said in an emailed statement. Nvidia declined to comment.