SoftBank was down about 11% in Tokyo on the morning after Sam Altman said OpenAI would not go public this year, and Peter Elstrom says the reason is that SoftBank is borrowing money to fund a stake it planned to cash out at the IPO.
The American version of this story is a debate about safety. The version Elstrom covers is a balance-sheet problem in Tokyo and a set of memory stocks in Seoul, both of which moved before the US market opened.
"So they have a lot on the line and the sooner they can get payback, the better for Masayoshi Son and SoftBank."
Elstrom leads Bloomberg's Asia technology coverage and was reporting the Monday session in Tokyo and Seoul as it happened, which is where the pacing debate first hit prices.
The full segment is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 4 insights that matter.
👤 Guest: Peter Elstrom, Bloomberg's Tech Editor covering Asia, who leads the region's technology coverage
🎙️ Host: Ed Ludlow, who anchors Bloomberg Tech from San Francisco
📰 Published: 14 September 2026 on Bloomberg Tech
🟣 Apple Podcasts | 🔗 Episode page | ⏱️ length not available
Key Takeaways
Beijing's answer is that the United States is the one manufacturing the AI panic
The foreign ministry spokesman said the US is starting this fear-mongering around AI
AI is more popular with the public in China than in the US, and Elstrom links that partly to a controlled press
China's labs are fast followers without frontier-scale compute, so nobody is asking them to slow down
The Communist Party keeps a tight rein on them while pushing them toward cheaper open-source models
SoftBank fell about 11% because the OpenAI listing it planned to cash out on just moved
It is borrowing to fund the stake and building data centers through Stargate at the same time
The memory names in Seoul took the hit before New York opened
SK Hynix was down about 7% and Samsung about 5%
1. Beijing's Fear-Mongering
Ludlow noted the out-of-order chronology of the day — the president was asked about Amodei's essay, and then Chinese officials responded, one of them calling the warnings fear-mongering and saying confrontation and vicious competition would disrupt efforts for global AI governance. He asked Elstrom to summarize Beijing's position.
The official line puts the source of the alarm in Washington. "So China's position here is quite interesting. The spokesman for the foreign ministry came out and said the U.S. is starting this fear-mongering around AI," Elstrom said
The domestic politics are the opposite of America's. He said AI is much more popular with citizens in China than it is in the US, for a number of different reasons, and that this is "not coincidentally because... the press is quite controlled there"
2. Fast Followers, Not Frontier
Elstrom's explanation for why China is not the one being asked to pace is capacity, not ideology. He said the Chinese AI companies are much smaller, have not had the kind of big data center build-outs seen in the US, and do not have the kind of power the American AI companies have
On where they sit against OpenAI and Anthropic, he was explicit: "They've been fast followers in this market so far, and they don't have nearly the kind of compute that you do have in the US right now."
The state's posture is control plus support at the same time. He said the Communist Party has held a pretty tight rein on the AI companies while also supporting them
The direction it is pushing them in is the cheaper one. He said Beijing has been pushing the companies toward the open-source model the program has discussed before, which is less expensive and lets companies adopt the technology a bit more quickly
3. SoftBank and the IPO Delay
Ludlow turned to the one stock moving for a reason other than chip demand: SoftBank, which fell in the Japanese session and stayed under pressure in its US-listed shares after Altman said there would be no IPO this year on safety grounds.
The trade unwound as soon as Asia opened. "Yeah, you see this AI ink spill over from the United States into Asia today. And as the Monday morning trading started today, SoftBank shares got hit," Elstrom said
"SoftBank was down about 11%," he said, with SK Hynix and Samsung also down in South Korea
The mechanism is an exit that just got pushed out. He said SoftBank is a huge investor in OpenAI and plans on cashing in as OpenAI goes public, so Altman acknowledging that he was not going public this year — and that it was not the right time for it — pushes back the timeline for that holding becoming a publicly traded stock
The exposure is larger than a normal venture position because of how it is funded: "It's not just that they're investors. They're actually borrowing money to be able to put into OpenAI," Elstrom said
He added that SoftBank also wants to build out infrastructure through its Stargate venture to put up these data centers
Which is why the delay matters to one person in particular: "So they have a lot on the line and the sooner they can get payback, the better for Masayoshi Son and SoftBank."
4. Seoul Moved First
Ludlow said it had been obvious by Saturday that Monday's US open would be tense, and asked what the news flow felt like in London and Asia.
Elstrom said the selling reached Asia before it reached anyone else: "Well, it hit the markets a bit earlier here, as we were talking about earlier."
The damage was concentrated in memory. "You definitely saw it with the memory chip stocks in South Korea, where their shares were down pretty hard. SK Hynix, which has been the leader in HBM, was down about 7%. Samsung is down about 5%, too," he said
The thing being priced is a capital spending cut that has not been announced. He said the concern was that maybe the slowdown is going to affect capital spending — "Of course, the companies haven't said that yet, but you're beginning to see that spill through global markets today"
Bonus Insights
Elstrom described the Chinese criticism as coming from officials rather than from the companies: the foreign ministry spokesman spoke, and the labs themselves did not
The open-source push Elstrom describes is the same one the program has covered as China's pitch to buyers outside the US, and he gave the reason plainly — it costs less and it gets adopted faster
Ludlow closed the segment by saying capital spending is the concern, having opened it on a political dispute about safety
Elstrom's bottom line is that the pacing debate arrived in Asia as a pricing event rather than an argument: SoftBank's stake in OpenAI is financed and waiting on a listing that has moved, the Korean memory names are being sold on a capex cut nobody has announced, and Beijing's position is that the panic is American.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
SoftBank (Down about 11% on the day; a huge OpenAI investor that is borrowing to fund the stake and planning to cash in at the listing)
SK Hynix and Samsung (The Korean memory names that fell about 7% and about 5%; Elstrom calls SK Hynix the leader in HBM)
OpenAI (The listing that moved, and the reason SoftBank's timeline moved with it)
Stargate (The venture through which Elstrom says SoftBank wants to build out data center infrastructure)
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