SoftBank Group's Masayoshi Son has become the richest person in Asia amid the AI boom. Market euphoria has propelled shares of the Tokyo-listed investment giant to a record high, making it Japan's most valuable company by market capitalization on Monday, overtaking automaker Toyota Motor.
AI revolution is '50x bigger' than the dotcom boom: SoftBank's Masayoshi Son to CNBC
Japan's Nikkei 225 rose above 67,000 for the first time on Monday, as a surge in SoftBank Group turned the technology investor into the country's most valuable listed company and underlined the growing force of the artificial intelligence trade in Tokyo. The blue-chip gauge climbed as much as 1.4% to an intraday record of 67,231.28 before ending the midday session at 67,038.24, up 1.1%.
SoftBank Group announced today that it plans to spend up to €75 billion (around $87 billion) to expand data center capacity in France.
SoftBank is promising to spend at least $52 billion on building a network of massive data centers in France, helping advance Europe's goal of tech independence with what would be the continent's largest AI infrastructure project.
Japan's SoftBank Group will invest €45 billion over the next five years in a push to build up artificial intelligence infrastructure in France, founder Masayoshi Son told the paper La Tribune Dimanche in an interview published on Saturday.
SoftBank Group stock surged nearly 13% on Tuesday, hitting a record intraday high of 8,000 yen and emerging as the best performer on the Nikkei 225. The move extended the stock's winning run to a fourth straight session, turning Masayoshi Son's technology investment group into one of the clearest market winners from the latest wave of AI enthusiasm.
SoftBank's latest rally was sudden, sharp and driven by renewed excitement around artificial intelligence. The Japanese investment group added roughly $35 billion in market value on Thursday after a near-20% surge, then extended gains on Friday as investors chased exposure to Nvidia, Arm and the prospect of an OpenAI listing.
Shares of SoftBank Group extended gains for a second straight session Friday. The rally tracks a sharp rise in Arm Holdings shares overnight in the U.S.
SoftBank stock staged one of its sharpest rallies in years on Thursday, jumping 20% in Tokyo and adding about $35 billion in market value after Nvidia's results showed once again how strongly AI is driving global markets. The trigger came from California, where Nvidia reported a record quarter that beat already elevated expectations.
SoftBank Group is closely tied to the AI boom through its stake in Arm Holdings, whose chip designs are used in AI servers and data centers powered by Nvidia systems.
Power infrastructure firm SB Energy has confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the United States, it said on Wednesday, seeking to tap buoyant investor demand for new listings.