SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman attend an event in Tokyo in February 2025. SoftBank's investment gain on OpenAI stood at an estimated $19.8 billion as of December. SoftBank Group sprang back to a quarterly profit after Masayoshi Son's bet on OpenAI paid off in valuation gains, cementing the Japanese company's position as an investment proxy for the ChatGPT creator. The Tokyo-based company has invested more than $30 billion (¥4.58 trillion) in OpenAI, accumulating an 11% stake as of December, and has been in talks to invest as much as $30 billion more in a round that would value the startup at about $750 billion to $830 billion. As of December, SoftBank's investment gain on OpenAI stood at an estimated $19.8 billion, the company said Thursday.

SoftBank shares have plunged around 40% since late October as it sits at the forefront of a global AI selloff. Growing unease over frothy artificial intelligence valuations is weighing on shares of SoftBank Group, which traders increasingly view as a proxy for privately held OpenAI. The Japanese tech investor sits at the forefront of a global AI selloff amid worries about new pressure on OpenAI following Alphabet's Gemini 3.0 debut. SoftBank shares have plunged around 40% since late October, erasing over ¥16 trillion ($102 billion) in market value, as its founder Masayoshi Son prepares to double down on OpenAI and the infrastructure that supports it. SoftBank has ridden the global AI investment boom faster than any other Japanese company.

Like everyone, I have come to massively resent the insidious creep of subscription services. I started off with an affordable, shareable Netflix subscription, many years ago. Then came Spotify, then Disney when I had children, then Prime Video, all of which I could just about justify. Then my Fitbit started wanting to charge me to unlock features in a device I'd already bought. Google now charges me monthly to store in the cloud the photos I take on my Google phone.

Shin-Etsu Chemical said Tuesday that it will build a new semiconductor materials plant in the city of Isesaki, Gunma Prefecture, at a cost of some 83 billion. The plant, slated to be completed by 2026, will make photoresists, including extreme ultraviolet resists used for state-of-the-art chips for generative artificial intelligence systems, and other semiconductor-related materials. The investment includes the cost to buy a 150,000-square-meter site for the factory. It will be the Japanese company's first new domestic production base since its plant in the city of Kamisu, Ibaraki Prefecture, was built in 1970. The Isesaki plant will also carry out research and development in the future. Currently, the company makes photoresists and related products at its plants in the prefectures of Niigata and Fukui, both along the Sea of Japan, and in Taiwan.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- A Tokyo company aimed for the moon with its own private lander Sunday, blasting off atop a SpaceX rocket with the United Arab Emirates' first lunar rover and a toylike robot from Japan that's designed to roll around up there in the gray dust. It will take nearly five months for the lander and its experiments to reach the moon. The company ispace designed its craft to use minimal fuel to save money and leave more room for cargo. By contrast, NASA's Orion crew capsule with test dummies took five days to reach the moon last month. The lunar flyby mission ends Sunday with a Pacific splashdown.

Ibiden and TSMC did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Fox Business Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on FoxBusiness.com. TOKYO - Japanese companies are ramping up the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced technology to reduce waste and cut costs in the pandemic, and looking to score some sustainability points along the way. Disposing of Japan's more than 6 million tonnes in food waste costs the world's No.3 economy some 2 trillion yen ($19 billion) a year, government data shows. With the highest food waste per capita in Asia, the Japanese government has enacted a new law to halve such costs from 2000 levels by 2030, pushing companies to find solutions.

Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 5 video game console went on sale Thursday, a key test of the company's ability to sustain its biggest growth engine during a coronavirus-era gaming boom. The new PlayStation is Sony's most important gadget since the Walkman, and it goes head-to-head with Microsoft Corp.'s next-generation Xbox over the holidays. The PlayStation 5 is anchored by the new Spider-Man game. Both consoles have chalked up solid sales since initial orders started in September, straining supplies. The ¥49,980 PlayStation 5 -- a version without an optical drive goes for ¥39,980 -- marks a watershed moment for a company once synonymous with music players and Trinitron TVs.

Technology is global, but ideas are local. The same IoT technology is being deployed all over the world, but a small Japanese startup might be who helps us make sense of it all. There is amazing work being done in user experience design, but most designers are operating with the contract of keeping users engaged. This is a fundamental shift from the traditional user-centered and functional design approaches. Today we sit down with Kaz Oki, founder of Mui Lab, and we talk about user design can actually improve our lives and help us disengage. We also talk about the challenges of getting VCs to invest in hardware startups, why Kyoto might be Japan's next innovation hub, and what it takes for a startup to successfully spin out of a Japanese company It's a great discussion, and I think you will really enjoy it. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. If you're a fan of Disrupting Japan, you know that I have a strong dislike for attempts to make Japan sound too exotic and this goes in both directions. On one side, we have consultants who claim that Japanese business practices are so unique, arcane, and confusing that the only way westerners can possibly understand them is by paying large sums of money to consultants such as themselves. And on the other side, of course, we have people insisting that foreigners can't really understand Japanese anime without a thorough and nuanced knowledge of Japanese language and history. I mean, there are differences, of course, and those differences should be acknowledged and respected, but whether an idea is coming from Japan or America, or Germany, one true measure of the value of that idea is its universality. The most important achievements might emerge out of cultural biases or sensitivities but they address something universally true, something deeply human. Today, we sit down with Kaz Oki of Mui Lab and we're going to talk about Mui's radical rethinking of how we should interact with computers and the different contexts for that interaction. The Mui itself is a tactile and visual user interface that literally fades into the furniture when you're not using it.

Technology develops differently in Japan. While US tech giants have been grabbing artificial intelligence headlines, a business AI sector has been quietly maturing in Japan, and it is now making inroads into America. Today we sit down again with Miku Hirano, CEO of Cinnamon, and we talk about how exactly this happened. Interestingly, Cinnamon did not start out as an AI company. In fact, when Miku first came on the show, the company had just launched an innovative video-sharing service. Today, we talk about what lead to the pivot to AI and why even a great idea and a great team is no guarantee of success. We also talk about some of the changing attitudes towards startups and women in Japan, the kinds of business practices AI will never change, and Miku give some practical advice for startups going into foreign markets. It's a great discussion, and I think you will really enjoy it. Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan's most successful entrepreneurs. Today, we're going to sit down and talk about artificial intelligence with Miku Hirano of Cinnamon. Now, Cinnamon is actually a great example of a successful Japanese startup pivot. When we first sat down with Miku four years ago, she had an innovative micro-video sharing company called Tuya and really, you should go back and listen to that episode. I've put a link on the show notes and it was really a good one.