How SoftBank Is Taking a Hit While AI Ambitions Have Yet to Pay Off

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Booking a quarterly loss, the venture-capital investor is taking on expenses for power equipment its data centers no longer need, while waiting to reap the reward of its $64.6…

Booking a quarterly loss, the venture-capital investor is taking on expenses for power equipment its data centers no longer need, while waiting to reap the reward of its $64.6 billion OpenAI stake.

With a boss who says he is “all in” on Artificial Intelligence (AI), SoftBank Group (SFTBY) (T:9984) has had a tumultuous year. And that continues today.

SoftBank shares surged 13.9% in Tokyo trade on Tuesday, follow-through from Monday’s strong showing for AI plays and chip stocks on Wall Street.

Then, after the bell, the company reported a ¥1.1 trillion ($7.1 billion) loss for the three months through September. That leads to a ¥768.0 billion ($4.8 billion) loss for the first half of its fiscal year, with the company hit hard both by the cost of building out data centers and the cost of financing its investment.

The September quarter marks the company’s first quarterly loss in almost two years. SoftBank’s U.S.-listed ADRs are down 5.8% at the open. The company’s investment returns are impacted by investment losses in the likes of Korean e-commerce platform Coupang (CPNG), which has seen its shares sink 30.0% so far this year.

It’s a microcosm of how 2026 is playing out for SoftBank, one of the biggest venture-capital backers of technology companies, and AI plays in particular. After its shares shot up 91.4% last year, it is looking at a 12.0% year-to-date decline for 2026.

At the start of June, SoftBank shares hit an all-time high of ¥9,074, up more than double (106.2% to be exact) since the start of the year. The company even briefly replaced Toyota Motor (TM) (T:7203) as the most-valuable company in Japan, as I explain in my June 2 column.

But that didn’t last long. By the end of the month, SoftBank had already been eclipsed in market value by Japanese NAND flash-memory maker Kioxia Holdings KXIAY (T:285A). Now SoftBank shares sit down double digits on the year, and at one-third of their peak value, with a loss of 57.3% from the top.

Toyota (TM) (T:7203) is back in the top…

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