- SoftBank now personally guarantees a $10 billion loan against its stake in OpenAI.
- The shift follows an OpenAI IPO delay that cut SoftBank’s shares by 13%.
- It marks the third revision to this loan’s terms since discussions began in April.
SoftBank Group is back in talks with a group of lenders for a $10 billion loan backed by its OpenAI stake, this time adding a corporate guarantee. Reuters reports that SoftBank will cover repayment if the OpenAI shares end up being worth less than expected.
At first, lenders could claim the OpenAI shares only if things went wrong, and SoftBank would not have to repay if the shares were insufficient. These slowed-down talks. The new group of lenders is likely to include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Mizuho Financial Group.
A loan that keeps changing shape
SoftBank has tried before to borrow money using its OpenAI stake, changing the terms each time. In April, TFN reported that SoftBank initially sought a $10 billion margin loan at about 7.88% interest, but cut the amount to $6 billion in May as lenders were concerned about valuing private-company shares.
Now, talks are back to $10 billion, this time with a corporate guarantee.
This loan comes on top of SoftBank’s $40 billion unsecured bridge loan from March, which was backed by eight banks. That loan has no collateral and is due in March 2027, with repayment expected mostly from an OpenAI IPO.
SoftBank has put more than $60 billion into OpenAI and related projects, including the Stargate data centre with OpenAI and Oracle. TFN reported in June that SoftBank’s net debt is $122.9 billion, highlighting the scale of its OpenAI exposure relative to its other investments.
The IPO delay shifts the outlook
OpenAI said it might wait until 2027 to go public, as CEO Sam Altman wants a $1 trillion valuation instead of selling shares at a lower price. SoftBank, which expects to own about $65 billion in the company by October, saw its shares fall as much as 13% after the news. This was its biggest one-day drop in more than three months.
This reaction shows that investors treated SoftBank’s OpenAI stake as if it were already public. The delay pushes back the event that would make it easier to value and sell the stake. It also means there is less time before the March 2027 bridge loan comes due, since that loan was structured on the assumption that an OpenAI IPO would help repay it.
SoftBank has used this kind of margin loan before, but with easier-to-value collateral. It got a $5 billion loan backed by shares in Arm Holdings, a public company whose stock rose because of AI interest. This made the collateral simple for lenders to price and sell. The quick Arm deal, compared with the slow OpenAI loan talks, shows how banks treat public and private collateral differently, even within the same portfolio.
Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son has boosted SoftBank’s AI investments this year in data centres, semiconductors, and robotics. Whether lenders will offer more credit against a stake that cannot yet be valued on its own may now depend more on when OpenAI goes public than on Son’s plans.
