Masayoshi Son, once the cautionary tale of billionaire investing, has staged a remarkable comeback. SoftBank’s stock has surged roughly 73% year-to-date, briefly overtaking Toyota as Japan’s most valuable company.
On May 30, 2026, SoftBank committed €75 billion ($87 billion) to build AI data center capacity in France, targeting 5 gigawatts of infrastructure by 2031. The announcement sent the stock up 14% in a single day.
Son has declared the AI revolution “more than 10x, probably 50x bigger than dot-com.”
Key to this recovery are stakes in OpenAI-valued at $840 billion-and Arm Holdings, the chip designer powering mobile and AI workloads. SoftBank reported $20.7 billion in profit for the nine months ending December 2025.
The France deal reflects fierce global competition for AI infrastructure. Investors should watch SoftBank’s debt levels and cash flow from Arm and OpenAI as indicators of long-term stability.