Canada – 2025/08/07: In this illustrated photo, the SoftBank Group (SoftBank) logo is displayed on the smartphone screen. (Photo illustration: Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket, Getty Images)
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shares of Softbank Group It fell more than 11% after U.S. markets tumbled overnight on the back of increased profit-taking in the tech sector. Other Asian tech giants: TSMC and foxconnStock prices also fell.
The Japanese investment giant recently overtook Toyota Motor Corp. to become the country’s most valuable company, but SoftBank’s high-risk bet on AI has market concerns, even as investor enthusiasm for the new technology has seen its stock rise about 70% since the beginning of the year.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son told CNBC that he expects the AI revolution to be 50 times larger than the dot-com revolution of the 2000s.
“If you look at history, electronics and motorization crashed in 1929, but then went up for many years over the next 100 years. So there may be some corrections, but that would be the best investment opportunity for me,” Son said on Monday.
Deutsche Bank analyst Peter Milliken wrote in a recent note to investors that the market appears to be “obsessed with short-term momentum and less interested or unable to make detailed assumptions and map out long-term trajectories.”
In Korea, samsung and SK Hynix After both companies’ market valuations exceeded $1 trillion in May, their stock prices fell 1.25% and 2.75%, respectively, due to profit-taking.
Taiwan’s TSMC fell 1.65% and Foxconn fell more than 4%.
Chip giant overnight in US Nvidia While it fell by 3.62%, alphabet It fell by 0.79%. Amazon It decreased by 2.5%.
On Wednesday, SoftBank sold a 3.25% stake in Indian eyewear maker Lenskart through its subsidiary SVF II Light Bulb (Cayman), selling 56.5 million shares at 508.55 Indian rupees ($5.32) each. This brings the transaction value to approximately 28.73 billion rupees.
SoftBank shares last traded 11.3% lower at 7,377 yen.
Meanwhile, listed in London standard chartered and HSBCtwo British lenders with a large presence in Asian markets, also fell sharply on Thursday. Finally, Standard Chartered shares fell 6.9% and HSBC shares fell 4.9%.
prudentialthe British multinational insurance and wealth management giant headquartered in London and Hong Kong, fell 7.2%, dropping to the bottom of the FTSE 100.
—CNBC’s Li Ying Xiang, Soda Baimiya and Hugh Leask contributed to this report.
