SoftBank Pivots From Crypto to OpenAI as $30 Billion Bet Heads for a $1 Trillion IPO

Masayoshi Son exits crypto investment to pour billions into OpenAI, fueling record profit and stock surge, but analysts warn of AI bubble risks.

Masayoshi Son is clearing the decks. The Japanese tech conglomerate has sold its minority stake in Bitcoin financier Twenty One Capital to stablecoin issuer Tether for around $679 million, a tactical retreat from crypto that frees up capital for a single-minded pursuit: artificial intelligence. Tether will boost its own holding in the company to roughly 71% as SoftBank refocuses every available yen on the emerging AI infrastructure race.

The prize in Son’s sights is OpenAI. The ChatGPT developer is in the middle of a fundraising blitz to finance giant data centres, targeting $500 billion over the next four years, and SoftBank is weighing a contribution of up to $30 billion. That would lift the group’s total commitment to the AI pioneer — it already owns about 11% of the company — to more than $71 billion. OpenAI has also set the wheels in motion for an initial public offering, filing confidential paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on May 22 with an eye on a listing between September and November 2026 at a $1 trillion valuation.

The prospect of that debut has already sent SoftBank’s stock into orbit. Shares surged nearly 20% on Thursday and added another 11% on Friday, closing the week at ¥6,757. The rally was strong enough to drag the broader Nikkei 225 to a fresh all-time high of around 63,339 points, a testament to SoftBank’s outsized influence on Japan’s benchmark index.

Solid financial results underpin the speculative fervour. SoftBank posted a record profit of more than ¥5 trillion for the last fiscal year — the highest ever earned by a Japanese company. Its portfolio of publicly traded holdings is also performing well; chip designer Arm Holdings has seen robust gains and a stock split in early 2026 made its shares more accessible to retail investors, further boosting SoftBank’s net asset value. Another AI bet, Anthropic, delivered second-quarter revenue of $10.9 billion and recorded its first operating profit of $559 million, underscoring the commercial viability of large language models.

Yet the sheer scale of the bet is drawing warnings. Strategists at Bank of America caution that mega-IPOs from OpenAI and SpaceX — the latter expected in June 2026 with a potential $1.75 trillion market cap — could push the tech sector’s weight in the S&P 500 to a record 48%. Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has gone further, calling the phenomenon a bubble and pointing to what he describes as an “AI revenue cycle” in which big tech companies issue cloud credits to startups and later book those same credits as their own revenue, obscuring real cash flows. For SoftBank, rising bond yields remain the biggest external risk to its richly valued technology holdings.

The coming weeks will bring clarity. The final allocation of the OpenAI funding round is due, and SoftBank’s precise contribution will define the risk profile of its reshuffled portfolio. At its annual general meeting in June, management is expected to reveal more details about its investments in artificial superintelligence. For now, Son is doubling down on one vision — and selling off everything else to pay for it.