Lujiazui business district in Pudong, Shanghai, China.
Liu Liqun | Construction Photography | Hulton Archive | Getty Images
On Wednesday, SoftBank Group shares fell as much as 10% after the company announced it had sold its entire stake in U.S. chipmaker Nvidia for $5.83 billion. That’s because the Japanese giant is looking to capitalize on the ChatGPT maker’s “all-in” bet on OpenAI.
SoftBank shares fell 3.46% to close at 21,910 shares.
SoftBank said in its earnings report that it sold 32.1 million Nvidia shares in October and also reduced its position in T-Mobile, raising $9.17 billion.
Asia-Pacific markets were mostly higher on Wednesday after Wall Street traded mixedly on hopes that AI trade may be faltering as a record U.S. government shutdown nears an end.
Japanese benchmark Nikkei Stock Average rose 0.43% to close at 51,063.31, while TOPIX rose 1.14% to close at 3,359.33. South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.07% to close at 4,150.39, while the small-cap Kosdaq rose 2.52% to 906.51.
australian S&P/ASX 200 It fell 0.22% to 8,799.5.
hong kong Hang Seng Index rose 0.81%, while the mainland’s CSI300 index fell 0.13% to 4,645.91.
India’s Nifty 50 rose 0.83%.
Shares of Billionbrains Garage Ventures, the parent company of Indian online brokerage Groww, rose 20% in its market debut on Wednesday. The company raised 66.3 billion rupees (approximately $748 million) in its IPO.
Taiwan’s Thai Ex rose 0.58% to 27,947.09.
Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics manufacturer and Nvidia supplier, said Wednesday that its third-quarter profit rose 17% from a year earlier, driven by growth in its artificial intelligence server business.
In the US market last night, the average of the three major stocks closed mixed. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a new all-time high on Tuesday, while the Nasdaq Composite Index struggled as investors moved money away from tech stocks and into other parts of the market that trade at lower valuations.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 559.33 points, or 1.18%, to close at 47,927.96 as Wall Streeters bought up shares in a variety of blue-chip stocks, including health care giants Merck, Amgen and Johnson & Johnson. The S&P 500 index also rose 0.21% to end at 6,846.61. However, the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 0.25% to settle at 23,468.30.
—CNBC’s Sean Conlon and Pia Singh contributed to this report.
