SoftBank is working to finalise, by the end of the year, a financing commitment of $22.5 billion in favour of OpenAI, the US-based artificial intelligence company. The deal is exceptional in scale, reflecting both the accelerating global race in AI and the enormous capital requirements it entails.
The financing would rank among the largest ever undertaken by the Japanese conglomerate led by Masayoshi Son. It is part of a clear strategy to reposition SoftBank at the heart of the global AI ecosystem, at a time when OpenAI is multiplying investments in computing infrastructure and data centres to support the training and deployment of its models.
To meet this commitment, SoftBank has already carried out major portfolio reallocations. The group has sold its entire stake in Nvidia for around $5.8 billion, as well as part of its holding in T-Mobile US for nearly $4.8 billion. At the same time, the pace of investment by the Vision Fund has been sharply reduced, with any significant transaction now requiring direct approval from Masayoshi Son.
The Japanese group nevertheless retains other financial levers. A key potential source of liquidity lies in margin loans backed by its stake in Arm Holdings. Since Arm’s stock market listing, during which the share price has risen sharply, SoftBank has increased its unused financing capacity to around $11.5 billion, significantly strengthening its financial flexibility.
This substantial financial effort comes at a time when OpenAI is facing intensifying competitive pressure. The company must fund increasingly power-hungry computing infrastructure as technology giants also step up their investments. OpenAI and SoftBank are notably involved in the Stargate project, an initiative estimated at $500 billion aimed at building AI-dedicated data centres, viewed as strategic to maintaining the United States’ technological lead.
The stakes are all the higher given OpenAI’s soaring valuation. Following an agreement reached in the spring on a basis of around $300 billion, new discussions with industrial partners could push that valuation significantly higher, offering SoftBank the prospect of substantial medium-term capital gains.
The financing is also critical to OpenAI’s roadmap. Costs related to model training, deployment and the expansion of computing capacity continue to rise at a sustained pace. CEO Sam Altman has recently spoken of unprecedented energy and industrial requirements, going so far as to envisage, in the longer term, the construction of computing infrastructure equivalent to several tens of gigawatts.
