Riding the AI boom, SoftBank surpasses Toyota's 22-year reign atop Japan's market cap rankings; chipmaker Kioxia also surges to No. 3; Nikkei clears 67,000 for the first time, with analysts eyeing 68,000 by year-end

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son speaks at a forum in Tokyo in February last year. [Getty Images]
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son speaks at a forum in Tokyo in February last year. [Getty Images]

SoftBank has dethroned Toyota Motor as Japan's most valuable company by market capitalization, ending the automaker's 22-year reign at the top.

The Financial Times reported Sunday that SoftBank's market cap surpassed 46 trillion yen (approximately 437.8 trillion won, or $291 billion), propelled by surging AI demand.

SoftBank's share price has risen roughly 73 percent this year through Sunday. It climbed more than 8 percent that day alone to hit an all-time high, after the company announced the previous day it would invest up to 75 billion euros ($88.1 billion) in a network of AI computing clusters in France.

SoftBank accelerated its transformation into an AI company by forging an early partnership with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and has ridden that wave to push Japan's stock market to record levels. After the share price peaked last October, concerns about OpenAI's profitability triggered a temporary pullback, but the stock regained its upward momentum following the launch of Arm's proprietary chip and a more positive reassessment of OpenAI's growth potential.

Toyota's market cap had stood just above 48 trillion yen ($304 billion) at Friday's close, but the stock fell roughly 4.5 percent after the open Sunday, dropping below 46 trillion yen. The decline marked the end of Toyota's 22-year run as Japan's top company by market cap — a position it had held since overtaking telecom group NTT DoCoMo in 2003.

The market's appetite for AI was also on display at memory chip manufacturer Kioxia. The company's share price has surged more than 525 percent this year on expectations of strong demand for memory chips needed to build data centers. On Sunday, Kioxia overtook MUFG, Japan's largest bank, to claim the No. 3 spot by market cap.

The Nikkei 225 surged more than 1.2 percent in its first hour of trading Sunday, breaking through the 67,000 level for the first time. The index has climbed nearly 30 percent since the start of the year. Nomura equity analysts said last week that upward revisions to earnings forecasts for AI and semiconductor companies, among other factors, could push the Nikkei to 68,000 by year-end and as high as 70,000 the following year.


kate01@heraldcorp.com