SoftBank lost a fifth of its market value in five days. What was the reason?

Shares of SoftBank Techno Holding, which became the most expensive company in Japan back in early June, lost more than 20% over the last five trading sessions. Investors reacted to Bloomberg reports about SoftBank's possible difficulties in raising a loan of at least $6 billion secured by a stake in OpenAI. The selloff also coincided with waning investor optimism about AI companies and growing questions about the Japanese holding company's large-scale investment plans, MarketWatch wrote.

Shares of SoftBank on Wednesday, June 10, in a moment fell more than 10% in trading in Tokyo, but then partially cut losses and fell by 8.3% at the end of the session. MarketWatch associated such dynamics with reports that the company faced difficulties in trying to attract a marginal loan for at least $6 billion on the security of its stake in OpenAI. This was reported by Bloomberg in the morning of June 10, citing sources familiar with the situation. According to the agency's sources, SoftBank's negotiations with potential lenders on this matter have reached an impasse, although recently, Bloomberg's sources know, SoftBank secured about $5 billion of this loan. But it is unclear whether these were oral or written agreements, the agency notes.

SoftBank declined to comment on the matter.

In addition, investors' reaction may be related to concerns about OpenAI's listing, MarketWatch writes. Sam Altman's company filed a confidential IPO filing on June 8. After OpenAI's March funding round, which valued the ChatGPT developer at $852 billion, SoftBank's stake in it is valued at about $110 billion, the publication notes. SoftBank's large investment in OpenAI worries the market, Bloomberg notes, emphasizing that recent breakthroughs by OpenAI rival Anthropic (including the launch of a new AI model, Fable 5) have caused some investors to doubt the ChatGPT developer's prospects. Inside SoftBank itself, some executives at May 2026 also expressed concerns about those investments, the agency recalls.Creditors may also be concerned about SoftBank's other financial obligations, MarketWatch notes. For example, in late May, the company announced plans to invest €45 billion to develop AI infrastructure and data centers in France over the next five years, Reuters wrote.

In addition, recently, in addition to the impact of its ties with OpenAI on the company's quotes, another important driver of growth in SoftBank shares has become its 90% stake in Arm Holdings, notes MarketWatch. Shares of the semiconductor developer have tripled since the beginning of the year amid a boom in infrastructure investments for artificial intelligence. At its peak, SoftBank's stake was worth more than $400 billion, the publication points out. However, the sell-off in the tech sector that began last week has increased pressure on Arm Holdings (its securities have lost more than 25% over the past five sessions) and SoftBank shares and made investors more carefully assess the risks associated with the company's head Masaesi Son's large-scale bet on AI development.

Despite a 20% loss over the past five trading days, SoftBank shares have added about 46% since the start of 2026, and are up about 219% over the past 12 months. In early June, SoftBank overtook Toyota in market capitalization to become Japan's most valuable public company for the first time in history amid market excitement around artificial intelligence. However, the latest decline in market capitalization forced SoftBank to give up this status.

According to MarketScreener, which collected analysts' ratings, the attitude toward SoftBank shares remains predominantly positive: of the 19 analysts tracking the company's securities, 13 recommend buying them, four advise holding SoftBank shares in a portfolio, and two advise selling them (Sell and Underweight ratings).

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor