SoftBank leads decline in Japanese tech stocks as worries over AI spending spill over to Asia

TOKYO, JAPAN - FEBRUARY 03: SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son delivers a speech during an event titled "Transforming Business through AI" in Tokyo, Japan, on February 03, 2025. SoftBank and OpenAI announced that they have agreed a partnership to set up a joint venture for artificial intelligence services in Japan.Tomohiro Ohsumi | Getty Images News | Getty ImagesJapanese tech stocks took a tumble on Thursday as AI infrastructure spending worries on Wall Street crossed the ocean into the Asian markets, with AI-related stocks declining.Softbank Group Corp was among the top losers in the benchmark Nikkei 225, falling as much as 7.25%, with the index leading losses in Asia, down 1.23%.This comes as the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 1.81% overnight, dragged by losses in Oracle, Broadcom, Nvidia and other AI plays. The losses in Oracle came after the Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Blue Owl Capital's plans to finance the cloud infrastructure company's $10 billion Michigan data center had stalled. The company last week had refuted a report that said it had delayed some projects for AI major OpenAI to 2028.Tech-focused SoftBank has seen sharp volatility in its stock over the past month as fears over AI-related spending have gripped the market. At the start of the year, the group had revealed plans to invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.S. along with OpenAI, Oracle and other partners, and in September it announced five new U.S. AI data center sites under Stargate, OpenAI's overarching AI infrastructure platform.Other Japanese tech stocks also fell. Semiconductor equipment supplier Advantest, dropped as much as 5%. Counterparts Lasertec, Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron declined between 3% and 4%. Jesper Koll, expert director at Tokyo-based financial services firm Monex Group, said much of what goes into data centers, power centers, and AI hardware enablers are "Made in Japan, and can only be made in Japan." That makes Japanese tech, especially AI-related stocks more vulnerable to any worries around U.S. tech spending. On Wednesday, Japan's trade numbers showed that exports of electrical machinery jumped 7.4%, and semiconductor-related exports surged 13% year on year. Koll said the U.S.-led boom in tech spending was translating into growing exports of specialized machinery and equipment.Losses were less pronounced in South Korean chip heavyweight Samsung Electronics at 0.93%, while SK Hynix reversed course to gain 0.73%. Taiwan's TSMC, the world's largest contract chip manufacturer, was marginally down.