📰 Masayoshi Son is borrowing money again—this time $10 billion USD, plus €1 billion, all to complete the third round investment in OpenAI. The interest rate is set on September 24, funds are credited on September 29, and on October 1 the money must be transferred to OpenAI—so the timeline is extremely tight.
🔥 After this deal is completed, SoftBank’s cumulative investment in OpenAI will reach $64.6 billion, securing roughly a 13% equity stake. The previously agreed $30 billion additional investment has been split into three tranches, with $10 billion per tranche. SoftBank will essentially have to raise another massive sum every three months.
To be honest, what Son is betting on is not a company that can already generate stable profits. OpenAI projects revenue of $36 billion in 2026 and $350 billion by 2030, but the same document also predicts that over the next five years, cumulative negative free cash flow will total $278 billion. Total compute and data center spending is even higher, at $856 billion.
💡 The bigger problem is that SoftBank is buying preferred shares that cannot be freely traded before listing. In other words, the $64.6 billion is temporarily locked up and can’t be sold at any time like publicly traded stocks. When OpenAI goes public, and when SoftBank will truly have an exit window, are still unclear.
👀 SoftBank previously also signed a $40 billion unsecured bridge loan with a term of only one year, then used longer-term bonds and loans to refinance and replace the short-term borrowing. When he bet on Yahoo and Alibaba, Son could afford to wait. This time, he’s using corporate credit and debt to wait for an AI gamble that may take many years to pay off.
🤔 If you were a creditor, would you be willing to lend money to a transaction like this?
#OpenAI #软银 #孙正义 #Artificial Intelligence
🔥 After this deal is completed, SoftBank’s cumulative investment in OpenAI will reach $64.6 billion, securing roughly a 13% equity stake. The previously agreed $30 billion additional investment has been split into three tranches, with $10 billion per tranche. SoftBank will essentially have to raise another massive sum every three months.
To be honest, what Son is betting on is not a company that can already generate stable profits. OpenAI projects revenue of $36 billion in 2026 and $350 billion by 2030, but the same document also predicts that over the next five years, cumulative negative free cash flow will total $278 billion. Total compute and data center spending is even higher, at $856 billion.
💡 The bigger problem is that SoftBank is buying preferred shares that cannot be freely traded before listing. In other words, the $64.6 billion is temporarily locked up and can’t be sold at any time like publicly traded stocks. When OpenAI goes public, and when SoftBank will truly have an exit window, are still unclear.
👀 SoftBank previously also signed a $40 billion unsecured bridge loan with a term of only one year, then used longer-term bonds and loans to refinance and replace the short-term borrowing. When he bet on Yahoo and Alibaba, Son could afford to wait. This time, he’s using corporate credit and debt to wait for an AI gamble that may take many years to pay off.
🤔 If you were a creditor, would you be willing to lend money to a transaction like this?
#OpenAI #软银 #孙正义 #Artificial Intelligence
