Should You Set Money Aside for SoftBank’s New AI Play?

I’ve often pointed to SoftBank Group  (SFTBY)  (T:9984) as one of the most-dynamic Asia-based companies, a one-time software distributor that has morphed into a tech venture-capital fund. It’s also a smart backdoor play to invest into OpenAI prior to that listing, as I explain here.

U.S. investors may soon get another SoftBank-backed opportunity to invest into Artificial Intelligence (AI). The Tokyo-based company plans to carve out and list an AI and robotics company called Roze that could list as early as this year.

SoftBank Founder Pushing for Quick listing

Roze may seek a valuation as high as $100 billion. It intends to deploy autonomous robots to help build data centers, making the whole construction process more efficient.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son is pushing for the initial public offering to happen as soon as possible, according to the Financial Times, which first reported the potential Roze IPO. Son wants to use the proceeds from a listing to fund SoftBank’s massive bets on AI.

SoftBank plans to hold an analyst open day in July at the data center it is helping build in Texas, the FT states. That’s intended to promote the upcoming IPO. It could come as early as H2 2026, although that may be ambitious given the entity hasn’t even taken shape inside SoftBank yet.

Strong Track Record With Arm Debut

Should U.S. investors be excited?

The answer is likely “Yes.” It has made smart moves on AI, building up an 11% stake in OpenAI.

SoftBank spun out the British chip designer Arm Holdings  (ARM)  with a separate listing in 2023. The shares have risen from the $51 offer price to $207 as I write.

Arm licenses its chip blueprints for other companies to produce. But it is also now developing its own in-house brand of chips designed to power AI data centers.

Roze could incorporate key business lines of ABB Robotics, which ABB Ltd. (ABBNY) had been looking to spin out as a separate listed company before SoftBank agreed to buy the robotics business for $5.4 billion last October. In December, SoftBank inked a $4.0 billion deal to buy DigitalBridge Group  (DBRG) , a private-equity company investing into digital infrastructure such as data centers, mobile-phone towers and fiber networks.

Land and existing SoftBank infrastructure assets could be included in the Roze offering, alongside the ABB Robotics operations, the FT reports. Building out a data-center portfolio is a way for SoftBank to play a direct role in the development of AI, besides investing into the space.

Skeptics Even Inside SoftBank Itself?

But there is skepticism even from within the company about the scale of its AI ambitions as well as the compressed timeline to list Roze. Executives are reportedly concerned about the market disruption caused by the war in the Middle East. Meanwhile, OpenAI appears to be pushing its own IPO plans into 2027, but it remains one of several mega-listings in the works.

SpaceX and Anthropic are also thought to be preparing to list. They and OpenAI may be looking at individual valuations north of $1 trillion. Those listings could deplete the dry powder held by institutional investors to take stakes in new listings.

SoftBank is “all in” on AI, according to founder Son. It has sold its $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia  (NVDA)  to fund those ambitions, as I explained in November, and is also taking on massive levels of debt. Having already pumped $30 billion into OpenAI, it has committed to invest another $30 billion into that startup.

Mega IPOs in the Works

The consequences of those commitments are stretching SoftBank’s credit levels and liquidity. The company in March secured a $40 billion bridge loan to bolster its investments in AI. It also sold US$12.7 billion in shares of the mobile-phone provider T-Mobile  (TMUS)  and has leveraged its remaining stake of close to 90% of Arm‘s shares to the tune of US$20 billion.

Besides its direct investment into OpenAI, SoftBank is also a partner with the same company on the Stargate initiative, a coalition that also includes Oracle  (ORCL) . OpenAI and SoftBank are each investing US$500 million into SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy, which is building a data center in Texas that’s one of five AI sites that Stargate intends to operate.

Listings for OpenAI as well as Roze could restore SoftBank’s balance sheets. Meantime, SoftBank shares are trading as an AI proxy. They’ve been highly volatile, cresting to an all-time closing high on October 29 before correcting 43.7% in less than a month. They then drifted through this March – then surged again, up 70.0% between March 23 and April 24.

Full-Year Earnings Next Week

We may see movement ahead of SoftBank’s scheduled earnings release on May 13, when it’s due to report figures for the full fiscal year through March 31. Investors will be watching less for the results but instead for the group’s future spending plans, and evidence it is overextending itself.

Those massive moves have been driven by excitement around AI rather than SoftBank’s quarterly results. SoftBank shares are up 17.5% in 2026, but that’s only slightly ahead of the overall 14.8% runup in the Tokyo benchmark Nikkei 225.

Son’s track record is patchy but generally good. Son was an early investor in Alibaba Group Holding  (BABA)  in 2000, a prescient move that saw a $20 million investment grow to a $20 billion valuation at its height. That bankrolled Son’s subsequent investments, although it appeared he had lost his way with fateful large plays backing shared-office developer WeWork, fraud-plagued Wirecard, crypto implosion FTX, and a robotics-heavy pizza-delivery startup Zume that never really got off the ground.

It may have a fight on its hands to secure the Roze name. A Korean company originally called Rozeta Tech already dubs itself Roze AI and says it is prepping a Nasdaq listing under the ticker ROZE. It uses Big Data to operate safety systems to prevent fires and other sorts of disasters.

Son believes that what he calls Artificial Super Intelligence will emerge over the next decade to be 10,000 times more intelligent than the human brain. It’s a step up on what he dubs Artificial General Intelligence, which can achieve levels similar to “human genius,” or 10 times smarter than the average person.

SoftBank shares will only resume trade on Thursday after an extended break. Tokyo’s markets are closed for public holidays on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

It’s been a long weekend for Labour Day in much of the rest of the world. Markets were closed on Monday in mainland China, Japan and Thailand, and remain shuttered today in China, Japan and South Korea.

Related: Despite Legal Battles, Blue Dot Fever, Live Nation Shareholders Have Little to Fear

At the time of publication, McMillan was long NVDA.