SoftBank's Week of Extremes: Record Highs, a $282 Million Symbotic Exit, and OneWeb's Survival Fight

SoftBank Group capped the final week of May with a $60 billion surge in market value, pushing shares to an all-time high in Tokyo. The stock rocketed nearly 20% on Thursday, followed by another 12% Friday — the sharpest two-day rally for a global heavyweight in years. Investors piled in on the back of OpenAI’s IPO whispers, Arm Holdings’ continued climb, and a concrete IPO pipeline that includes two major US listings. Yet beneath the euphoria, the Japanese conglomerate trimmed a robotics bet and watched a satellite venture teeter on the edge of insolvency.

The robot selloff came on May 27, when SoftBank’s SVF Sponsor III unit unloaded 5.59 million shares of Symbotic at $50.42 apiece, pocketing roughly $282 million and exiting its entire position. Other SoftBank affiliates still hold 39.83 million shares of the automation firm, which itself shed 14% of its value during the same turbulent week. Down in low-earth orbit, OneWeb — a satellite operator backed by SoftBank and Airbus — is reportedly mulling bankruptcy under pressure from SpaceX’s Starlink. Investors have already poured $3.3 billion into the venture, and OneWeb now says it needs another $3 billion just to stay afloat.

SoftBank, however, is doubling down on two far bigger listings. SB Energy, a developer of renewable energy and data centers, is targeting a September IPO at a valuation above $50 billion. JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi and Mizuho are leading the underwriting. The unit is also a partner in the US government’s Stargate initiative and is building a 1.2-gigawatt data-center campus in Texas, anchored by solar and battery storage. Separately, the autonomous-robotics spinoff Roze is preparing to go public with an estimated valuation of roughly $100 billion, working with the same Wall Street banks.

On the home front, SoftBank is orchestrating a Japanese AI alliance that now includes around 30 companies. Core members with stakes above 10% — SoftBank, NEC, Honda, and Sony — are joined by three megabanks, Nippon Steel, and Kobe Steel at smaller ownership levels. The goal is “Physical AI,” systems that use manufacturing data to drive robots and equipment autonomously. Ten firms are expected to finalize their investment commitments in June. The stock dipped about 2% on the announcement, with analysts pointing to the difficulty of building a unified AI model serving so many industries.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying SoftBank?

Meanwhile, the AI arms race keeps accelerating. Anthropic, OpenAI’s fiercest rival, closed a $65 billion Series H over the weekend at a $965 billion valuation — blowing past OpenAI’s $852 billion mark set in March. SoftBank is no bystander: it booked hefty gains from its OpenAI stake in recent quarters, and OpenAI itself is now said to be in active IPO talks with Citigroup and JPMorgan. In February, SoftBank committed an additional $30 billion to OpenAI, structured to convert into common stock at the time of the IPO.

That conversion potential has turned SoftBank into the only publicly traded proxy for two AI juggernauts: Arm and OpenAI. Arm’s 32% quarterly surge pushed it to 40% of SoftBank’s total asset base, lifting the group’s net asset value by 30% in the fourth quarter. For the full fiscal year 2025, SoftBank reported cumulative investment gains of $45.7 billion and a net profit of $31.4 billion — the largest profit ever recorded by a Japanese company.

Wall Street remains divided. Eight analysts rate the stock “Strong Buy,” three say “Hold,” and one recommends “Strong Sell,” with a consensus price target just below current record levels. Several caution that the typical holding-company discount means shareholders don’t capture the full value of the underlying stakes. The private valuation of OpenAI, unproven at public-market scale, also keeps skeptics wary, especially after reports of missed internal revenue targets.

SoftBank at a turning point? This analysis reveals what investors need to know now.

The broader market backdrop lent a tailwind of its own. The Dow Jones closed above 51,000 for the first time on Friday, while the S&P 500 notched its ninth consecutive weekly gain. Technology stocks in the S&P 500 rose 15% in May alone — a powerful lift for a conglomerate as deeply embedded in the tech ecosystem as SoftBank. The next major checkpoint is August 11, 2026, when fiscal first-quarter earnings will reveal whether SB Energy and Roze are on track for their debuts, and whether OpenAI’s IPO fantasies finally take a concrete shape.

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