SoftBank Group Takes Top Spot as Toyota Falls After 22 Years

2026-06-01

SoftBank Group tops domestic market cap ranking

SoftBank Group's market capitalisation overtook Toyota Motor on Tuesday, putting it in first place among Japanese companies. It is the first time in about 22 years that Toyota has ceded the top domestic spot. Investors appear to be pricing in new growth expectations centred on artificial intelligence (AI).

In Tokyo trading on Tuesday, SoftBank Group shares rose as much as 15% from Friday's close to 8,626 yen, a record high since listing. Its market capitalisation climbed above 49 trillion yen. Shares were also lifted after SoftBank Group announced on May 31 that it would invest up to 75 billion euros (about 14 trillion yen) to build an AI data centre in France.

Toyota has held the top position in Japan's market-cap rankings since overtaking then-leader NTT DoCoMo in December 2003. Its market capitalisation topped 60 trillion yen in March 2026, but its share price has recently struggled to advance.

Funds flow into AI-related stocks

SoftBank Group, meanwhile, has drawn buying on the view that it is a leading name in AI, an area attracting accelerating investment worldwide. Its share price has quadrupled over the past year. The widest gap with Toyota came in March 2024, when the difference was about 50 trillion yen, before SoftBank Group's later surge in shares reversed the ranking.

Behind that is optimism about AI, which has entered a phase of broader adoption. Market attention is focused on US OpenAI, in which SoftBank Group is making a massive investment, and on British chip design giant Arm Holdings, its subsidiary. OpenAI is increasingly expected to go public, and many see the value of SoftBank Group's holdings rising further. OpenAI has also been estimated to have a corporate value of $1 trillion (about 160 trillion yen). According to SoftBank Group, its weekly active users reach 15% of internet users worldwide.

Arm is also seen as a positive factor. Its shares have risen on the back of expanding global chip demand. Demand for CPUs designed by Arm is strengthening as AI 'inference' that answers user questions and 'agentic AI' that carries out tasks autonomously spread.

Power shift in Japan's stock market

The companies at the top of the market-cap rankings have reflected the industrial structure of each era. In the early 2000s, NTT DoCoMo was No. 1. Its i-mode mobile internet service dominated the domestic market and came to symbolise Japan's early internet era before the arrival of smartphones.

Toyota, which rose to the top after the collapse of the IT bubble, led Japan's global expansion. It expanded local production overseas, mainly in North America, and in 2007 overtook Ford Motor in US sales to take second place. By localising sales and development, it built its position as the world's largest automaker.

The fact that SoftBank Group has overtaken Toyota is being taken as a sign that the AI era is now fully under way. In the market, companies benefiting from AI are attracting capital.

Kioxia Holdings, which makes memory chips for data centres, is expected to post net profit of 869 billion yen for April-June, up 48-fold, and its market capitalisation has surpassed Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group. Tokyo Electron, a semiconductor manufacturing equipment maker, is also among the top 10 by market value, ahead of Hitachi, whose transmission and distribution equipment business is growing on the back of rising power demand for data centres.

Japanese AI-related companies are gaining momentum in both earnings and share prices, but the gap with global tech giants remains wide. US Nvidia, a core supplier of AI chips, has a market capitalisation of about $5.1 trillion (about 820 trillion yen), making it the world's most valuable company ahead of US Microsoft and Alphabet.

In Asia as well, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world's largest contract chipmaker, and South Korea's Samsung Electronics, a major memory chip producer, are strengthening their presence. For Japanese companies to raise their profile globally rather than be overshadowed, active investment in AI is essential.

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