Is This the First Card in a Domino? SoftBank Wrote Off $3.7B on Power Equipment and Its NAV Fell 37%, From $445B to $282B
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Is This the First Card in a Domino? SoftBank Wrote Off $3.7B on Power Equipment and Its NAV Fell 37%, From $445B to $282B

Published: November 10, 2026

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Is this the first card in a domino? SoftBank wrote off $3.7B on power equipment. On top of it, its NAV fell 37%, from $445B in June to $282B. My sense - where there is one, there will be more.

What happened

SoftBank is building data centres in Ohio and Texas that OpenAI will rent. Power equipment is in short supply, so it paid $9.5B in advance to book it before its plans were final. The plans changed. $2.85B of those advances cannot be refunded, and changing the contracts cost another $0.88B.

Its CFO said SoftBank is still doing things "by trial and error" (Reuters).

Anyone who booked equipment or power years ahead in the same rush has a similar risk if plans change. Local opposition, grid delays and funding are changing plans across the build.

Where did the $163B go?

More than 90% of it is Arm, the chip designer SoftBank controls. Arm's share price went from about $150 at the end of March to a high of $439 in June, and it was $186 on 9 Nov. So NAV is still above March's $251B. Arm is a subsidiary, so the fall does not show in SoftBank's profit and loss. But SoftBank has borrowed about $25B against those shares (Reuters), and it raised $56.5B in one quarter, its highest ever, part of it to repay a bridge loan.

For the wider AI trade

The news this week that the FBI is looking at Nvidia's CEO (Reuters) does not help.

I wrote in May that the S&P 500 at 7,400 looked like irrational exuberance. The red flags have kept piling up... like waves building into a tsunami ... and a bust likely before AI pays off (1 Nov)

tigzig.com/post/ai-selloff-red-flags-piling-up-nov2026

A few quick points

From SoftBank's 10 Nov results:

▸ SoftBank may get up to $2.1B back as rebates over 10 years, but only on future equipment purchases and subject to conditions. It has not booked that. $6.6B of advances is still on its books.

▸ The same report has a second, smaller write-down: about $0.45B on a plant in Lordstown, Ohio, bought to make data centre equipment.

▸ NAV (net asset value) was $251B in March, $445B in June and $380B in September. The $282B is SoftBank's estimate with Arm, SoftBank Corp. and Intel at 9 Nov prices.

▸ Arm's revenue rose 27% in its latest quarter. The shares fell 13% the next day, a day the chip index fell 12%. Arm is still up about 70% this year.

▸ Net debt was 15.9% of the value of SoftBank's holdings in September, against its own policy limit of 25%. That leaves out loans backed by shares, like the Arm loan. On the 9 Nov estimate I work it out at about 20%, or about 22% after the $10B paid to OpenAI in October. SoftBank has not published it.

▸ Cash in the six months to September: operations used about $3.3B, after $4.6B of interest. Net new borrowing was about $50B.

▸ The OpenAI stake is still valued as in March. SoftBank said a new funding round could raise the value next quarter.

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