If you had to pick the single craziest story of the 2026 global capital markets, this one would be a top contender:
A company that hasn’t even officially launched yet is already being prepped for an IPO.
And the price tag the boss has in mind? $100 billion.
This is not a joke. On April 30, 2026, multiple outlets reported that SoftBank is setting up a new company in the U.S. called Roze AI—an artificial intelligence and robotics firm. The plan is to take it public as early as the second half of this year, at a valuation of around $100 billion.
The market, predictably, lost its mind. Some people admire Masayoshi Son’s boldness. Others think he’s back to painting castles in the sky. Plenty of people started whispering about WeWork again—because that debacle, after all, started in a pretty similar way.
The man at the center of this story is 67-year-old Masayoshi Son. He might be the most polarizing figure in global investing. A 100millionbetonYahooanda60 million bet on Alibaba both turned into legendary returns. But the WeWork and Uber disasters also gave him the title of “world’s biggest investment loss” for a while.
Now he’s going all-in on artificial intelligence. And Roze AI? It’s the riskiest card in that bet.
1. The AI Obsession: What Exactly Is Son Betting On?
Honestly, if you don’t understand Masayoshi Son the person, you won’t understand why Roze AI is being born this way.
In investment circles, Son has a nickname: “Madman.” It’s not an insult—it’s more a recognition that his way of placing bets is beyond what any normal person would consider sane.
In 2017, he shocked the world with the Vision Fund, a 100billionwarchest.Hedidn’thavethatkindofcashlyingaround.Hebuiltitusingamixofpreferreddebtandequity,basicallyengineeringitintoexistence.In2018,hewentfurther,pledgingpartofSoftBank’sAlibabastaketoraise8 billion in cash.
For Son, debt isn’t a risk—it’s an amplifier.
After the WeWork fiasco, most people assumed he’d dial things back. He didn’t.
In 2025, Son was back with a vengeance. This time, his target was the entire AI value chain. Chips, algorithms, data centers, robotics—he wanted a piece of everything.
Just look at the moves: he loaded up on Nvidia, scaling from 1billionto3 billion. At the same time, he poured money into OpenAI, completing a staggering $40 billion investment by the end of 2025.
But the real head-scratcher came next.
In November 2025, SoftBank sold its entire Nvidia stake for 5.83billion.NvidiawasliterallythehottestAIstockontheplanet.Sonsoldhisshovel−makershares,andalmostatthesametime,heannouncedanadditional22.5 billion bet on OpenAI through the Vision Fund.
From “selling shovels” to “digging for gold” yourself—that’s Son’s AI philosophy. He doesn’t just want to own shares in chip companies. He wants to own an AI empire.
2. Dropping $34.6 Billion… and the Numbers Are Getting Scary
But empires aren’t cheap.
In February 2026, SoftBank disclosed a number that made a lot of people’s eyes water: the company had already invested 34.6billioninOpenAI,withanother30 billion committed.
34.6billionplus30 billion. That’s $64.6 billion in total. To put that in perspective, it’s nearly half of SoftBank’s entire net worth, riding on a single bet.
Where’s all this money coming from?
The answer is simple: sell what you can, pledge what you can’t.
To raise cash, Son not only dumped Nvidia, he also leveraged Arm’s equity. Sources say SoftBank even discussed selling part of its Intel position—it bought nearly 2billionworthlastAugustat23 a share, and now the stock is at 96,makingthatstakeworthcloseto10 billion. It’s ready to be cashed out anytime.
But it’s still not enough.
In March 2026, S&P downgraded SoftBank’s credit outlook from “stable” to “negative.” Their reasoning: the massive OpenAI investment could seriously weaken SoftBank’s liquidity, portfolio quality, and financial strength.
CreditSights, a research firm, estimates that SoftBank is staring at a 32billionliquiditygap,includingbondsmaturingoverthenexttwoyearsandalready−signedacquisitiondeals—likethe5.4 billion purchase of ABB’s industrial robotics division.
SoftBank has even resorted to borrowing against its OpenAI shares. Reports say the company is seeking a $10 billion loan, using its OpenAI equity as collateral.
Bluntly put, Son is borrowing ammunition to keep fighting. He’s pledging assets that haven’t even gone public yet, to fund investments in companies that also haven’t gone public yet.
If this chess game works, it’s a masterclass in capital engineering. If it doesn’t… hasn’t the WeWork lesson been brutal enough?
3. So What Exactly Is Roze AI?
Once you understand SoftBank’s financial squeeze, the rush to IPO Roze AI makes sense. It’s Plan B to generate cash—fast.
Originally, Open AI’s own IPO was supposed to be the big event that would let SoftBank deleverage. But OpenAI is facing fierce competition from Google, Anthropic, and others, and doubts about its growth outlook have made the IPO timetable very uncertain.
Plan A is shaky, so you need a Plan B.
Enter Roze AI.
So what does this company actually do? In simple terms: it uses robots to build data centers.
The business has three layers. One: planning, constructing, and running data centers. Two: deploying autonomous robots to help build server farms—automation in infrastructure. Three: bundling SoftBank’s existing assets like land and data centers under one roof.
SoftBank has already kicked off a hyperscale data center project in Ohio. Notably, the electricity for this project is backed by a $33 billion gas plant funded by the Japanese government. Son’s bet is that he can replicate this model across other U.S. states.
On top of that, SoftBank plans to fold the recently acquired ABB Robotics into Roze AI. That gives the company both an “infrastructure” narrative and a “robotics” narrative—two of the hottest labels in today’s market, wrapped into one story.
Sounds compelling, right?
4. A $100 Billion Valuation… Seriously?
But a good story doesn’t automatically mean a reasonable valuation.
How big is 100billion?Forcomparison:Intel’smarketcapisaround200 billion. Equinix, the world’s largest data center operator, is worth about $80 billion. A company that hasn’t even opened its doors yet is supposed to sail past Equinix’s entire market value? That’s not ambition—that’s fantasy.
And there’s a key assumption baked into Roze AI’s business model: the data center boom must continue to expand rapidly and continuously. If the U.S. data center construction fever cools off, the logic behind that $100 billion price tag collapses pretty fast.
In fact, some people inside SoftBank are already voicing doubts. Several executives think the $100 billion target is way too “ambitious,” because it relies so heavily on aggressive expansion of data center operations. Sources have also hinted that there’s serious internal disagreement about both the IPO timeline and the valuation.
“Too ambitious.” In corporate-speak, that’s about as polite as “unrealistic” gets.
Also worth noting: building and running data centers is an incredibly heavy-asset business. A single hyperscale facility can cost billions of dollars, and the payback period is long. Roze AI claims it will use robots to boost efficiency, but nobody has proven you can build data centers with robots at scale, let alone do it profitably. It’s hard to slap a $100 billion price tag on a business model that hasn’t even been proved yet.
If you look at Son’s history, this story feels familiar. He gave WeWork an astronomical valuation too. That IPO imploded spectacularly, and it nearly ended his career. He later publicly admitted it was a “stain on his career,” blaming himself for pushing forward even when his team advised against it.
Feels like we’ve seen this movie before.
5. The Scene Outside Isn’t Helping: Three Mega-IPOs Are Looming
Roze AI’s plan faces another massive external challenge: the U.S. IPO market in 2026 might have to digest three historic offerings at once.
SpaceX is reportedly targeting a $75 billion IPO. OpenAI and Anthropic are also prepping to go public. At a financing summit in April 2026, multiple investors warned that all three could hit the market in the same calendar year—something virtually unheard of in capital markets history.
One analyst pointed out that SpaceX’s offering alone could equal nearly 10% of the average daily trading volume in the U.S. stock market. Can the market absorb that much new supply all at once? Nobody knows—and that’s before you even factor in the lockup expirations that will unleash even more shares later.
In other words, the 2026 IPO calendar is already packed. A bunch of giants are all fighting for the same limited pool of investor money. In that environment, getting a $100 billion valuation for Roze AI becomes a whole lot harder.
The founder of Inspired Capital put it bluntly at the summit: “These could be the three largest IPOs in history, and they could all happen in the same calendar year. The performance of some of these IPOs might actually act like a bucket of cold water on reality.”
The Bottom Line
Masayoshi Son once said: “AI isn’t just an investment. It’s the birth of a new species—a revolution for humanity.”
He might be right. But the way he’s betting on AI—concentrated positions, heavy leverage, rapid monetization, and packaging assets for quick IPOs—has him walking a knife’s edge every step of the way.
Will Roze AI successfully go public? Will it justify a $100 billion valuation? Right now, nobody has the answers. But one thing’s for sure: if this fails, Son is looking at a crisis far worse than WeWork.
Then again, if he wins…
Well, isn’t that just the classic story of a madman turning out to be a genius?
Masayoshi Son’s entire career has been a pendulum swinging between those two labels. The question now is: which side does this swing land on?