SoftBank Group reported quarterly earnings that beat analyst expectations, and the hero of the story wasn’t OpenAI or some flashy AI startup. It was Intel, the 56-year-old chipmaker that most people had written off as a dinosaur roughly eighteen months ago.
The Japanese conglomerate posted net income of ¥347.3 billion ($2.2 billion) for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026, which ended June 30. That’s an 18% decline year-over-year, which normally wouldn’t inspire much celebration. But Wall Street had braced for worse, and SoftBank cleared the bar thanks to a jaw-dropping ¥1.3 trillion ($8.5 billion) investment gain from its Intel position.
Intel’s resurrection did the heavy lifting
Here’s the number that matters: Intel shares surged 216% during the quarter. A stock that had spent years being the punchline of the semiconductor industry more than tripled in value over three months.
For SoftBank, which holds a substantial stake in the chipmaker, that translated into an $8.5 billion gain on paper. In English: one legacy chip bet generated nearly four times the company’s entire quarterly net income.
