SoftBank shares crashed 10.83% in early trading on Friday, extending a 14.4% fall from Thursday as the AI-heavy company was swept into a broader AI stock rout. The selloff pushed its credit risk to a four-year high and sent its five-year credit default swap spread as wide as 466 basis points.
For Masayoshi Son, who has spent billions building SoftBank around AI-linked assets, the move matters because the market is now pricing his company as if the upside from that strategy is farther away than the risk. The CDS level implied a default probability of 30.6%, a sharp reminder that investors are not only marking down the stock but also asking more to insure against the company’s debt.
That reaction lands on a balance sheet tied closely to a pair of assets that are supposed to define SoftBank’s AI story. It owns roughly 90% of Arm Holdings, whose chip architectures power much of mobile and enterprise AI workloads, and it has a $64.6 billion stake in OpenAI, even as OpenAI has decided to push its IPO to 2027.
The contradiction is hard to miss. SoftBank is being punished in a market selloff centered on AI even though its core holdings are built around AI growth, which shows how quickly enthusiasm for the theme can flip into skepticism about valuations and timing. The stock move also comes with a separate uncertainty hanging over Son’s wider plans: a report said China would not allow SoftBank to go ahead with the $5.4 billion acquisition of ABB’s robotics division, though it was not clear whether that objection was final or temporary.
SoftBank’s latest slide leaves Son facing a familiar test. He has bet on scale, speed and AI demand before the market fully agreed, and on Friday investors made clear they are willing to question that bet when the broader AI trade turns against him.
