SoftBank’s €75 Billion French AI Bet Sparks 10% Sell-Off as Investors Await Tenants and Robot IPO

Masayoshi Son is pushing deeper into artificial intelligence than ever before, but the market is pushing back. SoftBank shares tumbled 10.10% on Tuesday to close at €35.51, wiping out a chunk of gains built up over prior weeks. The trigger was a colossal investment pledge: €75 billion in AI data centers across France with no confirmed customers yet. Over the past seven days, the stock has shed 25.04%.

The planned facility in Hauts-de-France will boast 5 gigawatts of capacity and is slated to begin operations in 2031. SoftBank has yet to name a single tenant for the space, raising eyebrows among analysts. The company is still scouting partners to secure power supply, suggesting the project remains in its early planning stages. Investors, already wary of SoftBank’s history of bold bets, took the opportunity to lock in profits.

Yet the sell-off came on a day when Japan’s Nikkei 225 climbed 2.16%, lifted by easing geopolitical concerns in the Middle East and a recovery in semiconductor stocks. SoftBank’s slide was distinctly out of step, though not entirely surprising given the stock’s wild swings. The 30-day annualized volatility stands at 109.84%, and the relative strength index settled at 48.3, a neutral reading after recent violent moves.

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

Dramatic as Tuesday’s drop was, it is only one piece of a much larger puzzle. Son is simultaneously preparing an initial public offering for SoftBank’s robotics subsidiary Roze AI at a projected valuation of $100 billion. That ambition rests partly on the acquisition of ABB’s robotics division for $5.4 billion in October 2025. Son has likened the current AI wave to the dot-com boom but insists Physical AI will be far more consequential. He has also raised SoftBank’s stake in OpenAI to around 13%, representing a total investment of $65 billion. On the financial services side, the PayPay unit agreed to acquire a 70.2% stake in T&D Financial Life Insurance for $838 million, a deal expected to close in October 2027.

SoftBank is therefore juggling multiple giant initiatives at once: a €75 billion infrastructure play with no tenant, a $100 billion robotics IPO, a deepening bet on OpenAI, and an expansion into insurance. The company is pivoting from pure software toward capital-intensive hardware and physical AI, a shift that demands enormous resources and patience. Whether the French data center will lure customers in time, or whether the robot vision materializes before investors lose faith, are the questions that will define SoftBank’s trajectory in the years ahead.

Ad

SoftBank Stock: New Analysis - 9 June

Fresh SoftBank information released. What's the impact for investors? Our latest independent report examines recent figures and market trends.

Read our updated SoftBank analysis...

en | JP3436100006 | SOFTBANK’S | boerse | 69509238 |