SoftBank plunges 12% as AI infrastructure costs fuel Asian tech selloff

SoftBank Group plunged more than 12% on Friday, leading a broad selloff across Asian technology stocks amid mounting concerns over soaring artificial intelligence infrastructure costs. The decline followed a fourth consecutive session of losses on the Nasdaq Composite, which fell 0.46%, as Apple dropped 6% despite Micron posting stronger-than-expected earnings.

SoftBank's weakness rippled across Asia's semiconductor sector. South Korea's SK Hynix fell more than 3%, while Samsung Electronics lost nearly 3%. Japan's Advantest declined over 6% and Tokyo Electron fell more than 2%. Arm Holdings, SoftBank's chip designer, declined 3.2%, underperforming the broader sector. Separately, Apple announced MacBook and iPad price increases citing higher component costs, while Microsoft raised Xbox console prices, fueling investor concerns that soaring semiconductor costs could squeeze technology company margins.

The selloff was also partly driven by reports that OpenAI could delay its IPO until next year as it struggles to secure demand at a $1 trillion valuation. Equity strategists noted that investor enthusiasm for SoftBank may be capped by concerns over the IPO delay and Arm's growing competition from Qualcomm's expanding CPU market share.

For practitioners: this is a margin squeeze warning. Rising silicon costs are cascading from cloud operators into consumer device makers (Apple, Microsoft) and hitting ARM licensees. Watch capex efficiency metrics—companies spending $300B annually on AI data center build-out must now also hedge against component inflation. This pressures smaller-cap foundry partners like Advantest and Tokyo Electron harder than Nvidia or TSMC.