Vision Fund drives SoftBank Group profit up 36%

Japan's SoftBank Group Thursday posted net profits up more than a third, helped by gains from its investment fund which has ploughed billions into some of the hottest names in the tech sector.

Net profits for the financial year ending March at the telcoms and investment group came in at 1.41 trillion yen ($12.8 billion), up 35.8 percent.

The company hailed gains of 1.26 trillion yen from its investment funds, led by SoftBank Vision Fund, estimated to have firepower of around $100 billion with heavy Saudi Arabian backing.

Under CEO Masayoshi Son's leadership, the SoftBank Vision Fund has embarked on a series of investments, one of the most recent being a $1 billion joint injection with Toyota into ridesharing giant Uber to develop driverless cars.

The fund has also ploughed $1.5 billion in fresh financing into Southeast Asian ride-hailing company Grab.

Overall, the fund has set a goal of investing at least $100 billion in firms promising new technological innovations and has taken stakes in some of the hottest companies in the tech world, including Slack, WeWork and Nvidia.

In December, it raised around $23.5 billion via the IPO of its mobile unit but the shares endured a volatile start, losing 15 percent of their value on the first day of trade.