SoftBank Trades Above Record-High Close in Win for Masayoshi Son

(Bloomberg) — SoftBank Group Corp. shares traded above the company’s lifetime closing high for the first time in three years, buoyed by a global surge in AI and chip investment.

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The Japanese tech investor is gaining investor attention as its telecom arm moves aggressively to invest in generative AI, tying up with Microsoft Corp. and startup Perplexity AI Inc., while winning government subsidies to help it build data centers stocked with Nvidia Corp. accelerators. Its chip unit Arm Holdings Plc is also trying to position its architecture as a means to conserve energy in devices running artificial intelligence.

On Wednesday, SoftBank surpassed a previous record-high closing price it hit in March 2021.

The rally is a vindication for SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, whose reputation has been tarnished by big startup bets that cost the company billions of dollars in recent years. SoftBank’s close ties with Nvidia and OpenAI have strengthened the company’s position amid a global race to build AI-related infrastructure.

The darling of retail investors, SoftBank shares remain volatile. During the dot-com boom and bust, the company lost 99% of its market capitalization, erasing $70 billion of Son’s wealth. Its stock regained ground through two decades of effort rolling out broadband networks in Japan, selling the country’s first Apple Inc. iPhones and investments in some of the world’s biggest startups.

But its shares plunged again in 2021 in the wake of Beijing’s crackdown on tech firms and a flurry of missteps including investments in startups such as WeWork Inc., Katerra Inc., OneWeb Ltd. and Zume Pizza Inc.