Half-True, Half-Fiction: SoftBank Did Briefly Top Toyota, But Kioxia Never Did
“Toyota briefly lost its position as Japan's most valuable company to SoftBank Group prior to losing it to Kioxia”
The argument in brief
The claim is that Toyota lost its spot as Japan's most valuable company first to SoftBank, then to Kioxia. The SoftBank part is real and well-documented — it happened briefly in March 2024. But there is no credible evidence Kioxia ever came close to Toyota's market value, making the second half of the claim false.
Why it spread
The SoftBank-Toyota story was genuine and widely reported, so it gave the whole claim instant credibility. Kioxia's IPO was also real news around the same time, making the combination feel plausible. People naturally assumed that if the first part was true, the second part probably was too — a reasonable instinct that misinformation often exploits.
The claim states that Toyota temporarily lost its title as Japan's most valuable company to SoftBank Group, and then lost it again to Kioxia. The first part is true. The second part appears to be invented.
In March 2024, SoftBank Group did briefly overtake Toyota in market capitalization, according to both Reuters and Bloomberg. The surge was fueled by excitement around artificial intelligence and SoftBank's majority stake in chip designer Arm Holdings, whose shares had been climbing sharply. It was a notable moment — Toyota had long been seen as the undisputed heavyweight of Japanese public markets.
However, that overtaking was short-lived. The Financial Times reported that Toyota reclaimed its top position not long after. SoftBank's valuation is closely tied to Arm's volatile share price, so the gap opened and closed quickly.
The Kioxia part of the claim falls apart immediately when you look at the numbers. Kioxia, a memory chip maker, held its IPO in late 2024. Nikkei Asia covered the listing, but the company was valued at a fraction of Toyota's market capitalization at the time. There is simply no credible report — from any major financial outlet — of Kioxia surpassing Toyota. It was not even in the same ballpark.
This kind of misinformation follows a familiar pattern: anchor it to something real, then attach something false. The SoftBank story was widely covered and gave the claim a ring of truth. Kioxia was also in the news because of its IPO, making it sound plausible to anyone who had seen both headlines. But being in the news is not the same as topping Japan's stock market rankings. When a claim involves a specific, verifiable financial milestone, it is worth checking whether any major financial outlet actually reported it — because this one did not.
Sources
- Reuters
SoftBank Group surpassed Toyota in market capitalization to become Japan's most valuable company in March 2024, driven by AI enthusiasm and its ownership of Arm Holdings.
- Bloomberg
SoftBank briefly overtook Toyota as Japan's most valuable listed company in March 2024, with its market cap boosted by the rally in Arm Holdings shares.
- Nikkei Asia
Kioxia, the Japanese chip memory maker, conducted an IPO in late 2024, but there is no widely reported evidence that it surpassed Toyota in market capitalization to become Japan's most valuable company.
- Financial Times
The SoftBank overtaking of Toyota was documented as a notable but brief event in early 2024; subsequent rankings showed Toyota reclaiming its position, with no confirmed reports of Kioxia reaching comparable valuations.