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SoftBank CEO rues dumping Nvidia stake, pretends to cry as he hugs Jensen Huang
Jensen Huang and Masayoshi Son drew laughter from the audience of an AI summit as they joked about how SoftBank was once Nvidia's largest shareholder
Jensen Huang and Masayoshi Son drew laughter from the audience of an AI summit as they joked about how SoftBank was once Nvidia's largest shareholder before dumping its stake. The exchange occurred when the two billionaires took the stage at an AI summit in Tokyo on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported.
Footage of the hilarious exchange has been widely circulated online. It begins by showing Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang listing the various accomplishments of SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, including his role in bringing Apple iPhones to Microsoft to Japan.
“Many of you probably don’t know this, but at one point, Masa was the largest shareholder of Nvidia,” Huang told the audience.
At this point, SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son sent the audience into hysterics as he hugged Huang and pretended to cry over the missed opportunity.
“It’s okay,” Huang laughed as he consoled the Japanese billionaire. “We can cry together,” the CEO of Nvidia said, drawing more laughter from onlookers.
Watch the exchange below:
In 2017, SoftBank's Vision Fund acquired a stake of around 4.9% in Nvidia, which made it one of the largest shareholders in the company. However, by early 2019, SoftBank began to divest its stake in Nvidia. The stake was then worth around $4 billion, but would today have been valued around $160 billion.
Dumping Nvidia stake was a rare miss for Masayoshi Son, otherwise known as one of the world’s most astute tech investors.
However, he was not the only one to regret a missed opportunity - at the same Nvidia AI summit in Tokyo, Japan, Jensen Huang expressed regret about declining an offer from SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son nearly a decade ago, which would have helped fund a complete acquisition of Nvidia.
Today, the two companies are collaborating to introduce the world's first artificial intelligence (AI) and 5G telecommunications network. At the summit, Jensen Huang announced that SoftBank is building Japan’s most powerful AI supercomputer using the Nvidia Blackwell platform and has plans to use the Nvidia Grace Blackwell platform for its next supercomputer.
