By Anton Bridge and Junko Fujita
TOKYO (Reuters) -Shares in SoftBank Group jumped more than 13% to a record high on Friday morning in a show of investor support for the Japanese technology investor’s AI push after first quarter profit beat expectations.
SoftBank’s share price hit 14,205 yen at the close of morning trading.
SoftBank has announced a series of mammoth investments this year, including committing $30 billion to ChatGPT maker OpenAI, as well as leading the financing for Stargate – a $500 billion data centre project in the United States.
The firm beat analysts’ expectations to report a net profit of 421.8 billion yen ($2.87 billion) for the April-June quarter, compared to a loss in the same period a year ago.
Market enthusiasm for AI-related companies also pushed up valuatio