SoftBank Stock Retreats After Rally as OpenAI Competitors Eye IPOs

Dow Jones06-04 11:29

By Kosaku Narioka

SoftBank Group shares fell sharply Thursday following a recent rally, as rivals to OpenAI advanced plans for initial public offerings.

Shares were recently down 10% at 7,449 yen, equivalent to $46.53, after falling as much as 11% earlier in the session.

The stock has more than doubled over the past two months, driven by enthusiasm over growing demand for artificial intelligence and expectations surrounding a potential IPO by OpenAI, one of SoftBank's key investments.

The shares received another boost earlier this week after SoftBank unveiled a $52 billion data-center project in France.

Yet, OpenAI's rivals are also moving ahead with plans to go public, potentially giving them easier access to capital needed to build large-scale computing infrastructure.

SpaceX, which acquired OpenAI rival xAI in February, said Wednesday that it plans to sell around $75 billion of shares in its upcoming IPO. The company is targeting a June 12 market debut.

Anthropic, another major OpenAI competitor, said Monday that it had confidentially filed for an initial public offering, putting the company on track to go public as early as this fall.

OpenAI is a key bet for SoftBank Group. Its investment in the artificial-intelligence company accounted for about a quarter of SoftBank's $300 billion equity portfolio value at the end of March, second only to its stake in British chip-design unit Arm Holdings.

SoftBank Group shares have been volatile as investors have increasingly turned to the Japanese company--one of the few publicly traded companies with significant exposure to the maker of ChatGPT maker--to gain exposure to potential winners in the AI race.

OpenAI has been preparing to file confidentially for an initial public offering soon, The Wall Street Journal reported last month.

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

June 03, 2026 23:29 ET (03:29 GMT)

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SoftBank Stock Retreats After Rally as OpenAI Competitors Eye IPOs

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