SoftBank Vision Fund records $17.7B loss in the last fiscal year after writing down investments including WeWork and Uber, reports a net loss of $8.96B
SoftBank Group Corp. said its Vision Fund business lost 1.9 trillion yen ($17.7 billion) last fiscal year after writing down the value of investments …
Context & Ripple Effects
The fiscal year that just closed began with SoftBank's first quarterly operating loss in 14 years, when a $4.6B WeWork charge inside the Vision Fund produced an $8.9B quarterly fund loss. Weeks ago, SoftBank pre-announced a further ~$6.6B hit on its WeWork stake held outside the fund, guiding the group's annual net loss to ~$8.4B.
The final numbers land worse than that guidance: the Vision Fund's full-year loss reaches ¥1.9T ($17.7B) on write-downs of anchor holdings WeWork and Uber, and the group's net loss comes in at $8.96B. The corpus shows this was not a one-off — the same marking-to-market mechanism produced a $26.2B Vision Fund loss in the following fiscal year and another ~$32B annual loss in 2023.
First-order effects
- SoftBank Group closes the fiscal year with a $8.96B net loss — overshooting the ~$8.4B loss it guided when it pre-announced the ~$6.6B WeWork write-down outside the fund — with WeWork and Uber write-downs driving the Vision Fund's $17.7B loss.
Second-order effects
- Because the fund marks concentrated late-stage stakes to market, public-tech weakness now flows straight into SoftBank's reported results, as the 2022 loss tied to falling stocks and rising inflation confirmed — every portfolio write-down compounds into a group-level headline number.
Third-order effects
- The pattern held: after this $17.7B year came the $26.2B and ~$32B annual losses, with new Vision Fund investments collapsing to ~$3B by the year to March 2023 — the mega-fund model of large, marked-to-market bets in a handful of startups proving structurally prone to recurring record losses and retrenchment.
The trend: SoftBank's Vision Fund cycle shows that mega-funds holding concentrated, marked-to-market late-stage tech stakes convert public-market swings into recurring record losses and shrinking new investment.