After selling stake in Nvidia, SoftBank is looking for ‘its largest-ever borrowing’

SoftBank store in Ginza shopping district in Tokyo

SoftBank Group is seeking to borrow up to $40 billion – reportedly its largest-ever loan denominated solely in US dollars – as founder Masayoshi Son doubles down on his bet on OpenAI. Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported that SoftBank is in talks with four lenders, including JPMorgan Chase, for a loan of up to $40 billion with a repayment period of approximately 12 months.The report says that these funds will be used primarily to finance the Japanese conglomerate’s $30 billion investment in OpenAI, which was announced as part of a $110 billion funding round last week. Notably, SoftBank has already poured $30 billion into the ChatGPT maker – with the Japanese company now committing a total of $60 billion to a single AI.SoftBank held approximately 11% of OpenAI at the end of December, making it one of the company’s largest shareholders.

OpenAI now sits alongside SoftBank’s roughly 90% stake in chip designer Arm Holdings as one of the conglomerate’s most significant assets.

Softbank selling assets to fund OpenAI

SoftBank has been selling off other assets. Most notably, it has unloaded its stake in Nvidia — one of the defining winners of the AI chip boom — redirecting that capital toward Son’s larger ambition. SoftBank sold its entire stake for $5.83 billion (32.1 million Nvidia shares) in October. It also disclosed that it sold part of its T-Mobile stake for $9.17 billion.“We want to provide a lot of investment opportunities for investors, while we can still maintain financial strength,” said SoftBank’s chief financial officer, Yoshimitsu Goto, during an investor presentation, adding, “So through those options and tools we make sure that we are ready for funding in a very safe manner.” He said in comments translated by the company.SoftBank’s share price has also become increasingly tied to OpenAI’s competitive performance against rivals Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude — meaning any stumble by Sam Altman‘s company could ripple directly through to SoftBank’s market value.

Softbank’s other tech bets

Together with OpenAI, SoftBank has jointly invested $1 billion in SB Energy, an infrastructure company focused on building out data centres across the United States. It has agreed to acquire private equity firm DigitalBridge Group for approximately $3 billion in cash. Last year, it bought U.S. chip designer Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion and proposed a $5.4 billion acquisition of ABB’s robotics division.