&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "SoftBank shares plunge nearly 12% as AI slowdown fears hit its $64.6 billion OpenAI bet")
SoftBank shares plunged nearly 12% in Tokyo on Monday, as investors reacted to an unexpected new risk for one of the company's biggest bets: a possible slowdown in the race to build increasingly powerful AI.
The Japanese technology giant has committed $64.6 billion to OpenAI, giving it an expected stake of about 13%. Now, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has backed calls to slow the pace of frontier AI development and said OpenAI will not go public in 2026. That combination has made SoftBank one of the clearest stock-market proxies for investor confidence in the continued rapid expansion of OpenAI and the wider AI industry.
SoftBank shares fall sharply in Tokyo
SoftBank did not trade for the first 19 minutes of Monday's session as heavy selling pressure built up.
When trading began, the shares opened at 5,926 yen, down 9.4% from Friday's close of 6,540 yen. They later fell as low as 5,720 yen before trading around 5,781 yen, down 11.6%. The fall was much steeper than declines in major Asian AI-related stocks. TSMC was down about 1%, while SK hynix fell around 6%. That gap matters. It suggests investors were not simply selling semiconductor stocks. They were also reassessing companies whose valuations depend heavily on the continued acceleration of frontier AI.
Why OpenAI matters so much to SoftBank
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SoftBank announced in February that it would invest another $30 billion in OpenAI, taking its cumulative investment to $64.6 billion and its expected ownership to around 13%. The new investment was agreed at a $730 billion pre-money valuation.
The remaining investment is structured in three $10 billion tranches. SoftBank completed the first tranche in April, with the second scheduled for July and the third for October. The shares SoftBank receives are preferred shares that are designed to convert into common stock if OpenAI conducts an IPO or related listing. That makes Altman's latest IPO comments particularly important.
No OpenAI IPO this year
Altman said an OpenAI listing in 2026 would be “ill-advised” given the current focus on AI safety. He also backed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call to “pace the frontier” of AI development. Amodei has proposed independent safety evaluators with ongoing access to frontier AI companies, along with greater coordination between governments and AI developers. Altman said OpenAI would adopt the independent-evaluator approach.
For SoftBank, the issue is therefore bigger than one bad trading session
The company is making an enormous investment in a private AI company while the industry's leaders are openly debating whether the technology should move more slowly. SoftBank's October payment to OpenAI is also approaching, with another $10 billion scheduled under the investment agreement. The market's message on Monday was simple: if the AI race slows, companies most exposed to its rapid expansion may have the most to lose.
