Symbiotic tanks as company and SoftBank, its largest shareholder, announce offering of 10 million shares

Symbiotic was among the robotics companies that popped on Wednesday, gaining nearly 10% on the news that the Trump administration was on the precipice of a major push to support the industry.

So naturally, management thinks it’s a good time to sell shares — and its largest shareholder, SoftBank, agrees.

After the close on Wednesday, management announced an offering of 10 million shares, with 6.5 million of that as a primary offering from the company to raise money for general corporate purposes, and 3.5 million from a secondary sale by SoftBank, which owns over one-third of its shares.

The stock cratered on the announcement, giving back all of its one-day gains and then some.

Symbiotic went public in 2022 through a SPAC merger with a SoftBank-backed affiliate.

In October, SoftBank sold its entire $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia to meet an upcoming payment to OpenAI to finance its equity position in the company. Since SoftBank is slated to pay the ChatGPT maker more than $20 billion this month, it would appear that this is another step toward raising the needed cash for that position.

We’ll see if this divestment makes SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son cry.