SoftBank fell about 11% Monday to close at 5,795 yen, among the worst performers on a Nikkei 225 that lost 2%, after Sam Altman said in a magazine interview that OpenAI won’t go public in 2026. SoftBank has committed $64.6 billion to OpenAI for a stake of roughly 13%, and the preferred shares it holds only convert to common stock on a listing, so the delay leaves it holding a private position it can’t sell into a market. On Tuesday it repays the remaining $25.9 billion of the $40 billion bridge loan behind that investment, well ahead of the March 2027 maturity, per Bloomberg. Altman’s comment came as he and Elon Musk backed Dario Amodei’s weekend call for labs to slow frontier development, and other Asian AI names fell too, with Kioxia down 6% and SK Hynix 5.3%.
