SoftBank shares hit record high after 24 years on Arm and AI boost

SoftBank Group shares hit a record high on Thursday, just as the company’s massive tech investment arm shows signs of recovery and its outspoken founder Masayoshi Son emerged back into the public spotlight to align the Japanese giant to a future in artificial intelligence.

The firm has also been helped by the public market success of British chip designer Arm, in which Softbank has a majority stake.

Shares of the Japanese giant closed at a record high of 11,190.00 Japanese yen on Thursday — a far cry from the dotcom crash of the early 2000s and a more recent downturn for the company during the tech market troubles of 2021 and 2022.

Son founded SoftBank in 1981, back when the company distributed software. It went public in Japan in 1994, and, amid the internet boom, made a $2 million investment in Yahoo in the middle of that decade.

That started off the company’s tech investments.

The rise of the internet and of Yahoo pushed SoftBank’s stock to a peak closing price of 10,111.1 yen on Feb. 18, 2000. Three days prior, the firm’s shares had hit an intraday high of 11,000 yen.

As internet stocks came crashing down, so too did SoftBank’s share price, which at one point sank more than 90% below its dotcom peak.

It wasn’t until nearly 21 years later, on Feb. 16, 2021, that SoftBank exceeded its previous record-high close.

The recent rise to a share price peak has been volatile since Son positioned SoftBank as a visionary pioneer with the 2017 launch of a massive technology investment arm — the Vision Fund.

SoftBank made dozens of bets on tech companies across the world, some of which turned sour. Office sharing startup WeWork was perhaps among the highest-profile names. But some of SoftBank’s investments in Chinese firms also took a hit after Beijing kicked off its crackdown on the domestic tech sector at the end of 2020.

After lingering near then-record highs in March 2021, SoftBank’s stock fell sharply, alongside other global tech stocks. The Vision Fund posted then-record financial losses in 2022. Son said that SoftBank would go into “defense” mode and be more conservative with its investments. He changed tack shortly after the Vision Fund posted a record $32 billion loss in 2023, saying that the company would now shift into “offense,” because he was excited about the investment opportunities in AI.

SoftBank’s share price began a recovery from around May 2023, and the Japanese titan’s Vision Fund more recently posted better financials amid broader tech stock recoveries.

“Softbank Vision Fund had to write down various investments due to a combination of equity values declining and a tougher private financing environment. It looks like the write down cycle is mostly done, and there is a good chance that the IPO market will be more constructive going forward,…