SoftBank is rushing to secure 22.5 billion dollars for OpenAI by year-end. CEO Masayoshi Son is selling investments and may use loans against its Arm Holdings stake.SoftBank Group is racing to close a $22.5 billion funding commitment to OpenAI by year-end through an array of cash-raising schemes, including a sale of some investments, and could tap its undrawn margin loans borrowed against its valuable ownership in chip firm Arm Holdings, sources said.
The “all-in” bet on OpenAI is among the biggest yet by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, as the Japanese billionaire seeks to improve his firm’s position in the race for artificial intelligence. To come up with the money, Son has already sold SoftBank’s entire $5.8 billion stake in AI chip leader Nvidia, offloaded $4.8 billion of its T-Mobile US stake, and slashed staff.
Son has slowed most other dealmaking at SoftBank’s Vision Fund to a crawl, and any deal above $50 million now requires his explicit approval, two of the sources said..
Son’s firm is working to take public its payments app operator, PayPay. The initial public offering, originally expected this month, was pushed back due to the 43-day-long US government shutdown, which ended in November. PayPay’s market debut, likely to raise more than $20 billion, is now expected in the first quarter of next year.
The Japanese conglomerate is also looking to cash out some of its holdings in Didi Global, the operator of China’s dominant ride-hailing platform, which is looking to list its shares in Hong Kong after a regulatory crackdown forced it to delist in the US in 2021, a source with direct knowledge said.
Leave a Reply