SoftBank Sold Its Entire Nvidia Stake in 2019 to "Protect" Against Losses. Those Shares Would Be Worth $150 Billion Today.

In 2017, Masayoshi Son's Vision Fund built a 4.9% stake in Nvidia, then known mostly as a gaming chip company with promising AI applications. When Nvidia's stock dropped 50% during the 2018 tech selloff, SoftBank panicked. They set up a "collar strategy" to limit their downside—and their upside. By February 2019, they'd sold every single share, booking a $3.3 billion profit and patting themselves on the back for "protecting" the fund.

Then the AI revolution happened.

Nvidia became the backbone of ChatGPT, became the most valuable company on Earth (briefly), and those shares SoftBank dumped would have been worth over $150 billion by mid-2024. Son later admitted "the fish that got away was big." That's one way to put it. Another way: the Vision Fund, which was supposed to identify the future of technology, sold the literal future of technology to protect against a 50% loss... and missed a 15,000% gain.

The same fund that poured billions into WeWork because Adam Neumann had "crazy eyes" couldn't hold onto Nvidia for five years. Son said he was "embarrassed" and "ashamed" about the Vision Fund's performance. We can see why.