Topline
Masayoshi Son’s net worth plunged by more than $13 billion as shares of his SoftBank tumbled amid a broader tech sell-off on Thursday, ceding his title as the richest person in Asia to Mukesh Ambani.
The Japanese investment giant recently surpassed Toyota as Japan’s largest firm.
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Key Facts
Shares of SoftBank dropped by more than 11% in Tokyo-listed trading following an after-hours sell-off in the U.S, where the Japanese investment giant—not listed on major exchanges like the Nasdaq or New York Stock Exchange—is traded over the counter.
The stock joined a broader sell-off for tech: Shares of Taiwan’s TSMC dropped 1.6%, Foxconn fell 4%, Samsung declined by 1.25%, SK Hynix dipped by 2.75%, and in the U.S., Nvidia fell 3.6%, Alphabet lost nearly 0.8% and Amazon dropped 2.5%.
SoftBank’s stock dip subtracted $13.8 billion from Son’s net worth, valued at $86.5 billion as of Thursday, ranking him behind both Ambani ($89.3 billion) and Adani Group chair Gautam Adani ($87.2 billion) as the richest people in Asia, according to Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires list.
surprising fact
SoftBank became Japan’s most valuable company on Monday, with its market capitalization exceeding that of automaker Toyota Motor. The investment giant has a market value of $262.9 billion as of Thursday, ahead of Toyota’s $233.7 billion.
key background
Son’s fortune quickly swelled to above $100 billion earlier this week following a roughly 80% rally in SoftBank’s shares this year. The investment giant has bet big on AI in recent years, including a nearly 90% stake in the Nasdaq-listed chip maker Arm Holdings—whose shares have surged by 230% this year—and a recent $30 billion investment in OpenAI, which Son said would help “accelerate OpenAI’s research and ecosystem expansion.” Son told CNBC AI is the “biggest revolution of technology and realization that mankind ever experienced,” suggesting the hype surrounding the technology was up to 50 times bigger than the dot-com revolution in the 2000s.
what to watch for
OpenAI, in which Son’s SoftBank holds a hefty investment, is expected to file confidentially for an IPO soon. CNBC reported that OpenAI was expected to file at the end of May, and the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter, reported that an IPO is expected in the coming days or weeks. The ChatGPT maker was valued at $852 billion following a March funding round, though Anthropic secured its place as the most valuable AI startup last month after a $65 billion round valued the company at $900 billion.
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