SoftBank falls 11% in Tokyo trading

SoftBank Group shares fell 9.9% in Tokyo on Tuesday after a Wall Street Journal report said OpenAI missed internal targets for revenue and new users. (cnbc.com) (reuters.com) The drop was SoftBank’s worst one-day decline since November, according to market reports tracking the Tokyo move. Bloomberg said SoftBank was among the hardest-hit OpenAI-linked stocks. (marketwatch.com) (bloomberg.com) The trigger was not a SoftBank earnings release. It was a report that OpenAI had recently fallen short of its own goals for sales and user growth, raising fresh doubts about how quickly artificial-intelligence spending will pay off. (wsj.com) (nbcnews.com) Reuters reported that some OpenAI leaders had worried about whether the company could support its extensive data-center spending if revenue did not grow fast enough. CNBC said that concern spilled into stocks tied to OpenAI’s buildout. (reuters.com) (cnbc.com) That hit SoftBank especially hard because Masayoshi Son has made the company one of OpenAI’s biggest financial backers. Reuters previously reported SoftBank had taken an $8.5 billion loan for its OpenAI backing and arranged a $6.5 billion bridge loan for its Ampere acquisition. (reuters.com) The stock’s reaction also reflected how much SoftBank has tied its valuation to artificial intelligence after years of shifting bets across telecom, chips and venture investing. Its listed assets still include Arm, the chip designer central to many AI servers and devices. (group.softbank) (marketscreener.com) The selling was not limited to Japan. Bloomberg said Oracle fell 6.3% in New York and CoreWeave dropped 8% as investors cut exposure to what traders have started calling the “OpenAI complex.” (bloomberg.com) (marketwatch.com) OpenAI pushed back on the Journal report, according to coverage Tuesday, but the market response was immediate anyway. For SoftBank, Tuesday’s Tokyo session showed how quickly doubts about OpenAI’s growth can hit Masayoshi Son’s broader AI strategy. (thenextweb.com) (bloomberg.com)