Adds executive comment, graphics

By Anton Bridge

TOKYO, May 13 (Reuters) - Technology investor SoftBank Group 9984.T reported on Wednesday that its net profit more than tripled to 1.83 trillion yen ($11.60 billion) in the January-March quarter, as it booked gains on the value of its investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.

It was SoftBank's fifth consecutive quarterly profit, with the Vision Fund investing arm booking an OpenAI-driven gain of 3.1 trillion yen in the quarter.

Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said SoftBank's annual profit of 5 trillion yen was the highest ever by a Japanese company.

Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son is one of OpenAI's most enthusiastic backers, with the group saying its cumulative gains on the investment total $45 billion.

But the scale of the OpenAI wager - SoftBank's most ambitious spending programme since the launch of the Vision Fund investment vehicles in 2017 and 2019 - has raised questions about financing pressures on the group.

Critics also say OpenAI no longer enjoys a dominant position among large language model developers as peers such as Alphabet's GOOGL.O Gemini and Anthropic's Claude grab market share, while the cost to train and run AI models is also rising.

"It's a good thing for the industry that competitors are refining business models and providing new services to new users," Goto told an earnings briefing.

"Overall that increases the value of the industry."

In March, S&P Global Ratings revised its credit outlook for SoftBank to negative, saying that OpenAI was exposed to fierce competition and the size of SoftBank's investment would affect the asset quality and liquidity of its portfolio.

GAIN ON INTEL INVESTMENT

SoftBank has sold off stakes in holdings such as T-Mobile TMUS.O and Nvidia NVDA.O, issued bonds and taken out loans, backed by its holdings in chip designer Arm ARM.O and its domestic telecommunications arm SoftBank Corp 9434.T.

SoftBank arranged a bridge loan agreement totalling $40 billion in March. On Wednesday, it said $20 billion was drawn down in April, primarily for the OpenAI investment, and $2.5 billion had already been repaid.

SoftBank had previously said it had agreed to invest a further $30 billion in OpenAI over the course of 2026, which would bring its cumulative investment to $64.6 billion for a 13% stake.

The group booked a 278.6 billion yen gain on its investment in chipmaker Intel INTC.O, which is led by former SoftBank board member Lip-Bu Tan.

SoftBank has also sought to build a portfolio of robotics firms, looking to gain a foothold in an industry that is in its infancy but is seen by analysts and investors as having potential to drive profits into the future.

It agreed to acquire the robotics business of Swiss engineering group ABB ABBN.S in a $5.4 billion deal last year, and created a new subsidiary within the group to hold its robotics-related stakes.

($1 = 157.7300 yen)