SoftBank Group

The world's largest contract chipmaker, TSMC, in Taiwan, pulling the Thai X down to post its largest single drop in history.

SoftBank, also amongst the biggest losers in Asia, as exposure to AI bets cause investors to turn bearish.

William de Gaulle has been an amazing voice on this, and it's been great speaking to him about this when they were going up these stocks as well.

He's the co-founder and lead portfolio manager at Blue Box Asset Management and joins us from Rutland in the United Kingdom.

Now I know that I have mentioned this project in prior videos, and I hope that nothing from those videos will be misinterpreted as criticism.

And if the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund hadn't blown the money on Softbank, they would have blown it on Credit Suisse or Neom, the 110 mile long city that they are building which guarantees that inhabitants are always the maximum distance from wherever they need to go at any point in time.

Oh, okay, yes, so that could sound like criticism, but I'm not even sure if that was even me, it might have been made using AI.

I don't really even cover topics like that on this channel, my videos, as regular viewers know, are mostly about rap and rapping, with my goal being to be the number one crypto nerd gangster rap channel on YouTube, but sometimes I do get distracted by other topics.

Nonetheless, the poor performance of these stocks did make tech VCs wary of IPOing stocks in the UK.

Now the IPO price isn't the only thing that firms consider when choosing an exchange to list on, especially for companies like Arm where SoftBank was only selling 9% of the shares to the public.

Stock market liquidity, research coverage and regulations will matter a lot too.

With regard to liquidity, the UK, unlike the US and Germany, charges a half of a percent stamp duty for share purchases, a form of financial transaction tax.

And Donald Trump, from the start of this presidency, has really got behind the building of data centres.

It was that very famous moment where he stood in the White House with Sam Altman, who announced Stargate, with Larry Ellison and Massa Son of SoftBank.

And it was this, you know, we're putting hundreds of millions of dollars into data centres in the US to allow us to advance AI.

And it's like the population has said...

So how do you square that circle?

So it's very interesting, right? Because, I mean, you know, again, at this point in time, after one year of effectively this US-Japan $550 billion deal, we can find about $70 billion of supposed commitments, right? Of which literally three quarters is one company, Masayoshi Son and SoftBank, right? And again, Masa...

God bless his heart, you know, SoftBank basically runs an empire.

There is no independent board.

If Masa wants to get something done, he gets it done.

Without a substantial exposure to the artificial intelligence boom that's driving growth elsewhere in Asia, the domestic sector is the main engine of the $1.5 trillion economy, which is Southeast Asia's biggest.

China has blocked SoftBank's proposed $5.4 billion acquisition of ABB's robotics division, dealing a significant blow to founder Masahoshi Son's ambitions to build a global physical artificial intelligence business.

According to reports, Chinese regulators rejected the takeover following a national security review that focused on supply chain security, data management and the potential transfer of strategically important robotics technology outside of China.

The Democratic sweep of Congress fuelled the rotation trade in Asia Thursday, dragging down shares of chip makers and data centre stocks on concerns over the AI build-out, while lifting auto and consumer goods makers.

China blocked a Japanese company from buying the robotics division of a European company.

How did it happen and why? China's regulator that conducts national security reviews of foreign investments is blocking Japan's SoftBank from acquiring the robotics division of Swiss-Swedish company ABB.

SoftBank had agreed to the deal last year for $5.4 billion as a core part of its AI strategy.

But there are at least one reason why this was doomed from the start.

China's Concerns About Information Leakage.

China is ABB's largest robotics market, making up around 30% of the business.

ABB has a network of local Chinese companies and channels spanning hundreds of cities.

Should SoftBank acquire ABB's robotics unit, it would gain extensive access to China's supply chains and technology.

They're all over the place today.

The loans for sale include a $25 million slice backing a massive data center site that's part of OpenAI and SoftBank's and Oracle's joint Stargate project in New Mexico.

It's the location where Oracle sent a developer a notice citing force majeure.

All right, who wants to buy a loan to a project where they've already declared force majeure because they can't get the gas pipeline built? And now, thanks to the election, probably never will.