SoftBank surpasses Toyota to become Japan's largest company by market capitalization

According to Odaily, AI demand has driven the Japanese stock market to a record high, with SoftBank surpassing Toyota on Monday to become the largest company by market capitalization in Japan. Thanks to its massive exposure to ChatGPT developer OpenAI and broader ambitions in the AI sector, SoftBank has transformed itself into the embodiment of the current investment frenzy sweeping the Japanese market.

SoftBank has risen nearly 73% so far this year and hit another all-time high on Monday, climbing over 8% after the company committed to investing up to 75 billion euros in France to build a vast AI computing cluster network. Its market value now exceeds 46 trillion yen (approximately $288 billion). Toyota had a market value slightly above 48 trillion yen at Friday’s close, but fell nearly 4.5% on Monday, dropping below 46 trillion yen. The automaker overtook telecom group NTTDocomo in this metric in 2003 to become Japan's largest company by market capitalization. (Golden Ten Data)