SoftBank Surges 16% as Nikkei 225 Hits Record After Golden Week

CNBC reported Thursday that Japan’s Nikkei 225 record was broken in dramatic fashion as the benchmark index surged more than 5% on its first trading day back from an extended Golden Week closure. The charge was led by SoftBank Group, which soared 16.5% for its best single-day performance since 2020.

Japan Prices In Three Sessions at Once

Markets had been shut for several days while global risk assets climbed sharply. Investors returned to Tokyo and moved fast, pushing Japanese tech names decisively higher. Global X ETFs investment strategist Billy Leung told CNBC the move was essentially the Nikkei compressing several missed sessions into one. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq had each set fresh records while Tokyo remained closed, with semiconductor and AI-linked names doing the heavy lifting on Wall Street.

Chip-testing equipment maker Advantest gained nearly 8%, while semiconductor equipment supplier Tokyo Electron jumped more than 9%. Chip solutions company Renesas Electronics climbed nearly 14%. Leung described Advantest and Tokyo Electron as the most liquid Japanese ways for investors to express a view on the AI semiconductor trade.

SoftBank’s AI Ties Amplify the Move

SoftBank’s outsized gain reflected its deep strategic links to both Arm Holdings and OpenAI, making the group a de-facto listed proxy for the broader AI buildout. Overnight gains in Arm, which advanced 13%, and a blowout quarter from Advanced Micro Devices — whose shares rose 18.6% — fed directly into the Tokyo session’s mood. Server maker Super Micro Computer had jumped nearly 25% on Wall Street the prior session.

Background: Datacenter CPUs Emerge as AI Bottleneck

Rolf Bulk, head of semiconductor and infrastructure at The Futurum Group, said the rally extends a broader re-rating of AI infrastructure stocks. He argued central processing units have become a critical chokepoint as inference and agentic AI workloads multiply across data centers. CPUs manage agent sandboxes, orchestration layers, and database infrastructure — functions that scale alongside AI deployment. AMD’s own analysts project the total addressable market for datacenter CPUs could reach $120 billion by 2030, growing at more than 35% annually. Easing tensions between the U.S. and Iran, reflected in falling oil prices, also helped lift risk sentiment across the session.

What to Watch

SoftBank’s single-day surge brings the stock back into focus ahead of its next earnings update. The Nikkei 225 record resets the benchmark’s technical picture and puts fresh pressure on fund managers underweight Japanese equities. Whether the move holds will depend on whether Wall Street’s AI momentum continues into the next session.

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