SoftBank Secures Record $40 Billion Loan to More Than Double Its Bet on OpenAI

SoftBank Group Corp. announced Friday that it has secured a $40 billion bridge loan — its largest-ever dollar-denominated borrowing — to finance a $30 billion follow-on investment in OpenAI and cover related costs, doubling down on the global artificial intelligence arms race even as the Japanese conglomerate takes on substantial additional debt. The non-collateralized loan, which carries a 12-month maturity and will be repaid partly through asset sales, was underwritten by JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., and MUFG Bank — a consortium of the world's most powerful financial institutions signaling their own confidence in the AI sector's trajectory.

The financing is the latest escalation in SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son's strategy of becoming the world's dominant AI infrastructure investor. Son has framed the OpenAI relationship as central to his broader vision, which aims to make SoftBank the indispensable financial and operational backbone of the AI era. SoftBank held approximately an 11-percent stake in OpenAI at the end of December 2025 after earlier investments totaling more than $30 billion. Friday's additional $30 billion commitment would more than double the company's total OpenAI exposure to roughly $60 billion or more, betting on a single company at a scale unprecedented in the history of venture and growth investing.

OpenAI's valuation has skyrocketed in recent months, surpassing $300 billion following its latest funding round and the commercial success of successive ChatGPT model releases. The company is navigating a complex corporate restructuring to shift from its original nonprofit governance structure to a for-profit benefit corporation model — a transition that has sparked legal challenges from co-founder Elon Musk and raised governance questions from nonprofit watchdogs. SoftBank's deepened commitment signals confidence that OpenAI will successfully complete the restructuring and maintain its competitive lead against rivals including Google DeepMind, Anthropic, and Chinese challenger DeepSeek.

To fund its AI ambitions, SoftBank has been liquidating earlier investments aggressively. The company sold its remaining stake in Nvidia last year, recording a massive paper gain but forfeiting future upside in the chip giant that has become the defining infrastructure play of the AI era. It has also moved to monetize assets across its Vision Fund portfolio, including partial sales of stakes in SoftBank-backed companies in Asia and Latin America. The $40 billion bridge loan extends a broader pattern of leveraged bet-making that has defined Son's career — including the catastrophic WeWork investment of the previous decade — but supporters argue the OpenAI bet occupies a categorically different risk profile given AI's transformative and demonstrable commercial potential.

The announcement sent SoftBank's shares lower in Tokyo trading, reflecting investor unease about the company's growing debt load, even as analysts acknowledged that the OpenAI stake itself has already generated substantial paper gains. The loan comes at a moment of intense global competition in AI development, with Chinese companies racing to close the gap with American frontier labs and governments worldwide scrambling to establish national AI strategies. Son has argued publicly that the AI race is a winner-take-most competition in which hesitation is more dangerous than leverage, and that the OpenAI partnership gives SoftBank a first-mover advantage worth any amount of debt caution. Whether that conviction proves prescient or hubristic may well define Son's legacy — and SoftBank's future.