SoftBank overtakes Toyota as Japan’s most valuable company on AI surge

SoftBank Group vaulted past Toyota Motor to become Japan’s most valuable company, a shift that captures how aggressively investors are rerating firms tied to artificial intelligence. SoftBank shares climbed 14% in Tokyo trading, pushing its market value above 48 trillion yen, ahead of Toyota’s roughly 46 trillion yen.

The move ended Toyota’s 22-year run at the top of Japan’s corporate rankings. Toyota had held the country’s No. 1 market-cap spot since December 2003, when it overtook NTT DoCoMo, and SoftBank’s brief return to first place brings back memories of the internet bubble era, when it last held the crown in 2000.

The contrast between the two companies was stark. SoftBank shares were up more than 90% this year, while Toyota shares had fallen more than 10%. On the Topix, SoftBank was the day’s standout gainer and Toyota the benchmark’s largest drag, underscoring how quickly market leadership has shifted toward AI-linked names and away from Japan’s industrial bellwether.

SoftBank’s rally has been fueled not just by momentum, but by a series of concrete AI bets. On May 30, the company said it would invest up to €75 billion to build 5 gigawatts of AI data-center capacity in France. The first phase calls for an initial €45 billion commitment to deliver 3.1 GW in Hauts-de-France by 2031. That announcement landed just before the ranking flip and fed investor enthusiasm that SoftBank is positioning itself as a core supplier to the next wave of computing demand.

The stock surge also reflected stronger operating results. SoftBank’s annual profit jumped in fiscal 2026, with much of the gain tied to its investment in OpenAI, and reporting also pointed to a yearly gain of $46 billion at its Vision Fund. For investors, that matters because it suggests the market is not rewarding SoftBank only for speculation, but for exposure to one of the few companies seen as directly monetizing the AI buildout.

Toyota, by contrast, remains a powerful industrial business, but its valuation has been constrained by a more difficult backdrop for automakers, including macroeconomic pressure and geopolitical uncertainty. Some reports said Toyota’s market capitalization had exceeded 60 trillion yen as recently as March 2026 before easing back, a reminder that SoftBank’s rise was as much about accelerated enthusiasm for AI as it was about a collapse in Toyota’s fundamentals.

The broader market backdrop reinforced that message. The Nikkei briefly moved above 67,000 around the same time, a sign that AI-linked stocks were helping power a wider Japanese rally. SoftBank’s ascent suggests the AI boom has become strong enough to reorder corporate rankings once thought stable, and Japan is now part of that global repricing.