Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index closed above 67,000 for the first time in history on June 1, 2026, finishing the midday session at 67,038.24. That’s a 1.1% gain, or 709 points added in a single day. The catalyst: a ferocious rally in artificial intelligence stocks, led by a company that’s been betting its entire future on the technology.
SoftBank Group’s shares surged 10.3% intraday, single-handedly contributing 618 of those 709 points to the index’s advance. In other words, one company was responsible for roughly 87% of the Nikkei’s record-setting move.
SoftBank dethrones Toyota after 23 years
The rally pushed SoftBank’s market capitalization to ¥47.2 trillion, leapfrogging Toyota Motor’s ¥45.7 trillion. It’s the first time SoftBank has held the title of Japan’s most valuable listed company since 2000, back when the dot-com bubble was still making everything look like genius.
Toyota, a manufacturing colossus that produces roughly 10 million vehicles per year and employs hundreds of thousands of workers globally, was overtaken by a holding company whose most valuable assets are stakes in other companies. SoftBank’s crown jewels include significant positions in Arm Holdings, the chip design firm whose architecture powers most of the world’s smartphones, and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.
