The stock clawed back some losses to close 3.5 per cent down, which is still a minor wobble given it’s surged nearly 140 per cent this year. That didn’t stop the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street from clutching their pearls.

Radio Free Mobile analyst Richard Windsor wrote: “The news that SoftBank has sold its stake in Nvidia has not been well received, as the reality is that SoftBank has exited a relatively safe AI investment and bet it all on a proposition where the outcome is very uncertain.”

Retail investors were clearly rattled by the exit, with some analysts blaming the panic on concerns that SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son has gone all-in on OpenAI and lost touch with reality.

One analyst in Tokyo tried to shift the focus to the company’s record ¥2.5 trillion ($16.2 billion) net profit, mostly thanks to its Vision Funds, which banked a chunky ¥2.8 trillion ($18 billion) from bets including OpenAI.

SoftBank also flogged some of its T-Mobile stake for $9.2 billion, probably to pad out its growing OpenAI obsession.

Still, Windsor warned that “a large proportion” of the profit was driven by unrealised gains on investments, which history shows can evaporate in a heartbeat.

SoftBank chief financial officer Yoshimitsu Goto added fuel to the fire on Tuesday, saying the firm needed to “divest our existing portfolios” to scrape together more than $30 billion for its OpenAI binge.