TOKYO— SoftBank Group Corp. said it is holding back on new investments in China while it sees how the country’s tech crackdown plays out, in the latest sign of how Beijing’s move to tame its technology sector is rippling through the investment world.
The giant Japanese investor and operator of the $100 billion Vision Fund is one of the world’s best-known funders of Chinese startups. But recently, the value of many of those investments has been tumbling fast, after Chinese regulators started investigating some SoftBank investee companies for breaches including anticompetitive practices, consumer protection and data-security problems.
The decline in many of those valuations came on top of a fall in the value of other highflying Vision Fund companies as the frenzy over some of tech’s hot listings cooled slightly, depressing SoftBank earnings in the latest quarter.
SoftBank Chief Executive Masayoshi Son made an early, savvy bet on Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The Vision Fund loaded up on multibillion-dollar stakes in Chinese unicorns like car-share giant Didi Global Inc. and short-video app TikTok owner ByteDance Ltd., hoping to make spectacular returns when the firms went public.
The China crackdown has become so unpredictable and widespread that SoftBank and its funds are planning to hold off on investing much more there until the risks become clearer, Mr. Son said at an earnings press conference in Tokyo.
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