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SoftBank Secures $40B Loan to Expand OpenAI Investments

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SoftBank Group has secured a $40 billion bridge loan to strengthen its investments in OpenAI and support broader corporate initiatives.

The unsecured loan, which matures in March 2027, was arranged with major financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs and leading Japanese banks. The funding reflects SoftBank’s continued push into artificial intelligence as global competition intensifies.

The company, led by Masayoshi Son, has already committed significant capital to OpenAI through its Vision Fund and is deepening its involvement in AI infrastructure and development.

OpenAI, supported by Microsoft, has become a central player in the AI boom, driving large-scale investments across the industry. SoftBank has also been involved in major initiatives such as the Stargate Project, aimed at building AI infrastructure in the United States.

The new financing highlights SoftBank’s increasingly aggressive strategy in artificial intelligence after years of mixed performance from its investment portfolio.

SoftBank Posts Fourth Straight Profit on OpenAI Gains

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SoftBank Group reported its fourth consecutive quarterly profit, buoyed by gains from its investment in OpenAI, even as it increased borrowing to expand its exposure to artificial intelligence.

The company posted a net profit of 248.6 billion yen for the October–December quarter, compared with a net loss a year earlier. A significant portion of the improvement came from the rising valuation of its OpenAI stake, which SoftBank said generated a total investment gain of nearly $20 billion by the end of December.

Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son has committed more than $30 billion to OpenAI, building an ownership stake of around 11% through Vision Fund 2. OpenAI is reportedly seeking an additional $100 billion in funding at a higher valuation, with prospective investors including Amazon and Nvidia.

To finance its AI strategy, SoftBank has relied on asset sales, bond issuance and loans backed by holdings such as chip designer Arm. It has also reduced stakes in companies including T-Mobile and expanded margin loans tied to its Arm and domestic telecom shares. The company’s loan-to-value ratio rose to 20.6% at the end of December, while its cash reserves declined.

As SoftBank deepens its investment in OpenAI, investors increasingly view the conglomerate as a proxy for the AI firm’s performance. While AI enthusiasm has lifted valuations, rising competition and escalating model development costs continue to shape market expectations.

OpenAI and SoftBank Invest $1 Billion in SB Energy to Expand Stargate Data Center Buildout

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OpenAI and SoftBank Group will jointly invest $1 billion in SB Energy, committing $500 million each to accelerate the expansion of data center and power infrastructure for their Stargate initiative, SB Energy said on Friday.

SB Energy, which is owned by SoftBank, will build and operate OpenAI’s previously announced 1.2-gigawatt data center campus in Milam County, Texas. The facility is a key component of Stargate, a massive, multi-year plan to scale artificial intelligence training and inference capacity in the United States.

As part of the partnership, SB Energy will also become a customer of OpenAI, using its application programming interfaces and deploying ChatGPT internally for employees.

Stargate is a $500 billion initiative backed by major investors including Oracle, and was publicly endorsed by Donald Trump when the plan was unveiled in January 2025. The project reflects the scale at which leading AI developers are now operating as they race to secure computing power.

The deal highlights a broader industry shift in which technology companies are investing directly in energy and power infrastructure. Access to reliable electricity has become a critical bottleneck for AI expansion, as larger and more numerous data centers sharply increase power demand.

SB Energy said it is developing several data center campuses, with initial facilities expected to begin service later this year. “The partnership accelerates our delivery of advanced AI data center campuses and associated energy infrastructure at the scale required to advance Stargate and secure America’s AI future,” said SB Energy co-CEO Rich Hossfeld.

The data center construction boom has also driven rivals to commit unprecedented sums to infrastructure. Meta Platforms and other Big Tech firms have announced multi-billion-dollar investments spanning chips, cooling systems, servers and power generation.

At the same time, OpenAI is facing rapidly rising costs to train and operate its AI models amid intensifying competition from Alphabet’s Google. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees late last year that the company had entered a “code red” phase, prioritising improvements to ChatGPT while delaying other product launches to counter Google’s Gemini gaining traction.