By Kosaku Narioka
SoftBank Group shares rose sharply after news that OpenAI, one of its key investments, is preparing to file for an initial public offering in the coming days or weeks.
Shares were recently up 20% at their daily limit of 6,039 yen, equivalent to $38, on Thursday.
The Japanese technology investment company is one of OpenAI's largest shareholders.
The Wall Street Journal reported that bankers at firms, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, have been helping the artificial-intelligence company on a draft IPO prospectus it plans to file confidentially with regulators, possibly as early as Friday. OpenAI was valued at $852 billion in a recent funding round.
SoftBank Group in February agreed to invest an additional $30 billion in OpenAI in phases as part of the ChatGPT maker's recent funding round. That would bring SoftBank's total investment in OpenAI to $64.6 billion, representing a stake of about 13%, the Japanese company has said.
The ChatGPT maker will have to overcome a host of challenges, including concerns about whether the company will be able to generate enough revenue to support its large data-center spending commitments.
OpenAI recently missed multiple internal revenue and user targets after facing competition from rivals Google and Anthropic.
Besides SoftBank Group, other Japanese semiconductor-related stocks are broadly higher after U.S. chip company Nvidia reported record sales and income Wednesday, driven by surging demand for data-center computing and the rise of artificial-intelligence agents.
Renesas Electronics was recently 7.6% higher and Tokyo Electron was up 5.5%.
News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.
Write to Kosaku Narioka at kosaku.narioka@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 20, 2026 21:31 ET (01:31 GMT)
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