SoftBank surpasses Toyota to become Japan's most valuable company by market cap

Odaily Odaily reported that AI demand has driven Japanese stocks to record highs, with SoftBank surpassing Toyota on Monday to become Japan's largest company by market capitalization. Leveraging its significant exposure to ChatGPT developer OpenAI and broader ambitions in the AI sector, SoftBank has transformed itself into a vehicle for this investment frenzy sweeping the Japanese market.

SoftBank's shares have risen nearly 73% so far this year, hitting another record high on Monday with a gain of over 8%, following the company's commitment to invest up to €75 billion in France to build a massive network of AI computing clusters. Its market cap has now exceeded ¥46 trillion (approximately $288 billion). Toyota, which had a market cap slightly above ¥48 trillion at Friday's close, fell nearly 4.5% on Monday, dropping below ¥46 trillion. The automaker had previously surpassed telecom group NTT Docomo in this metric in 2003 to become Japan's most valuable company. (Jinshi)