SoftBank shares fell 14.4% on Thursday and plunged another 10.83% at Friday’s open as the company was swept into the technology-stock selloff. According to Sina Finance, reports that China would not approve SoftBank’s $5.4 billion acquisition of ABB’s robotics business also weighed on market sentiment.
Masayoshi Son’s high-profile technology investment empire at SoftBank, built with tens of billions of dollars, is under severe pressure. SoftBank shares have fallen 45% over the past month.
The company’s credit risk reached a four-year high today, as measured by five-year credit default swap (CDS) spreads. The spread widened at one point to 466 basis points, its highest level since October 22, 2022, corresponding to a 30.6% probability of default.
SoftBank’s core anchor asset remains its approximately 90% stake in Arm Holdings. Arm’s chip architecture supports most mobile and enterprise AI computing workloads. Concerns over an election “blue wave”—a Democratic landslide—put companies such as Arm in the spotlight and weighed on SoftBank.
SoftBank also holds a $64.6 billion stake in OpenAI. OpenAI had already decided to postpone its IPO until 2027. With market sentiment shifting after the Democratic landslide, rumors that Anthropic, which is preparing to go public, may not achieve the $2 trillion valuation many had expected have also put pressure on the outlook for OpenAI’s valuation.