SoftBank's Earthly Pivot Hits a Wall of Selling as Markets Punish Tech Darling
Published on 06/23/2026 at 17:35 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
The vision of data centers in orbit may be off the table, but SoftBank's feet are firmly planted in a much more volatile arena: the stock market. Masayoshi Son has scrapped any notion of extraterrestrial computing, dismissing ideas from Elon Musk as too costly, and instead committing billions to terrestrial AI infrastructure. Yet even as the conglomerate's subsidiary lays out bold profit targets for 2030, the parent company's shares are being savaged by a brutal shift in market sentiment.
SoftBank Group stock cratered 10.47% in Tokyo trading on Tuesday, extending a slide that began the previous session with a 5.2% loss. The stock now sits at 35.09 euros, deepening its 30-day decline to nearly 10%. The catalyst was a double blow: a retreat in US technology stocks and a geopolitical tremor from Washington's decision to allow Iran to sell oil in US dollars, a move that has injected fresh uncertainty into global energy markets and fueled a spike in volatility.
The selling pressure underscores SoftBank’s role as a bellwether for the tech sector. With its Vision Fund heavily exposed to growth-stage companies, any wobble in the appetite for risk hits the holding company disproportionately hard. The stock's annualized volatility has climbed to 116%, and the Relative Strength Index at 46.0 suggests the sell-off still has room to run before the shares are considered oversold.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SoftBank?
Inside the group, however, the narrative is one of disciplined expansion. SoftBank Corp., the domestic telecom and infrastructure arm, has laid out a roadmap to 2030 that centres on the "Osaka Sakai Activation Base", billed as one of Japan's largest AI data centers. Management expects the unit to generate operating profit of 1.7 trillion yen by the end of the decade, with net profit reaching 700 billion yen. The company also pledged to raise dividends steadily from the fiscal year starting April 2026, a move designed to reward shareholders as the heavy spending on AI technology transitions into what the leadership calls a "harvest phase".
Son's strategy shift is equally notable for what it rejects. The billionaire founder publicly walked away from space-based server farms, arguing that while orbital data centers might save energy on cooling, the logistics and hardware costs are prohibitive. For SoftBank, speed on the ground is now the only priority — and that means doubling down on partnerships with chip designer Arm and AI pioneer OpenAI, both of which are key to its long-term bet on artificial intelligence.
The juxtaposition is stark: a company planning for record profitability seven years out, while its stock gets hammered in the here and now. The next catalyst for SoftBank's shares will likely come from the direction of US tech markets, where a stabilisation could halt the rout. Until then, the market is pricing in scepticism — even as the CEO insists the real value lies not in the stars, but in the servers humming below.
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