SoftBank, known for its "betting on the future of technology," saw its stock price rise 7.55% in a single day in the Tokyo market today (26th), pushing its market capitalization above 43 trillion yen. Even more astonishingly, the stock has seen a cumulative increase of over 40% in the past week.
The potential of 40 trillion yen
The core driver of this surge is OpenAI's upcoming IPO application. Bloomberg points out that the news of OpenAI's IPO has excited the market because once OpenAI goes public, the long-standing issue of opaque valuations that has plagued the AI investment community will be put to the test for the first time by the public market, with those figures propped up by "the latest round of financing valuations."
Takashi Nakagawa, a senior analyst at Tokai Tokyo Intelligence Research Institute, told Bloomberg that the market is "extremely excited" that OpenAI's long-awaited IPO may soon become a reality, but he added, "Currently, the stock price is purely driven by expectations, and I want to see how OpenAI's market capitalization eventually stabilizes."
Meanwhile, SB Energy, a subsidiary of SoftBank that focuses on power generation and grid management, also announced plans to secretly file for an IPO in the United States.
SB Energy has raised over $1.8 billion in the past year from SoftBank, OpenAI, and asset management firm Ares Management, making it a key player in Masayoshi Son's ambition to deploy data centers in the US. The simultaneous announcements of IPOs by both companies effectively bring SoftBank's "hidden assets" to the surface.
$65 billion leveraged bet
SoftBank is one of OpenAI's largest shareholders, with total committed investments approaching $65 billion. It is expected to acquire approximately 13% of ChatGPT's developer in October of this year.
Last year, SoftBank participated in OpenAI's largest single funding round in history, raising $122 billion, at which time its valuation reached $850 billion. Now, once OpenAI goes public, this book investment will receive a true market price, rather than being supported solely by a private valuation.
Bloomberg also pointed out that one of the market's past concerns about OpenAI was the continued rise of competitors such as Anthropic, Google's Gemini, and Musk's xAI, which diluted OpenAI's moat narrative. This surge shows that the IPO news has reaffirmed some investors' confidence in OpenAI's market position, and this confidence is directly reflected in SoftBank's stock price.
However, Takashi Nakagawa's words are worth keeping: "At present, it is purely an expectation." OpenAI has not yet officially submitted its IPO filing, and SB Energy's application was also "secretly submitted," meaning that all key figures, revenue, losses, and path are still in the black box.
The reason IPOs excite the market is precisely because they signify the imminent opening of this black box. But what we see after it's opened is the real test.
Related reports
Financial Times: Nvidia to invest $30 billion in OpenAI, replacing last year's $100 billion deal.
