SoftBank Secures $11.87 Billion Loan to Keep Funding Its OpenAI Bet as Stock Drops 13%

SoftBank Group secured an $11.87 billion loan on September 14, 2026 to support its investment in OpenAI, up from its earlier $10 billion target — a specific escalation in the scale of financing behind CEO Masayoshi Son's generative AI bet.

Loan Structure

The Japanese conglomerate sealed the two-year facility the prior week, attracting commitments from around 20 banks — a broad lending syndicate reflecting both the scale of the financing need and continued bank appetite to participate in it despite the underlying investment's risk profile.

The Scale of SoftBank's OpenAI Commitment

SoftBank is expected to invest nearly $65 billion in OpenAI by October — a figure that puts the scale of this single loan into context as one piece of a much larger, ongoing capital commitment. The company also plans to repay the remaining $25.9 billion on a separate $40 billion bridge facility while exploring a potential $10-20 billion high-yield bond sale, indicating a broader, multi-instrument financing strategy rather than reliance on a single funding source.

A Sharp Stock Reaction

SoftBank shares fell as much as 13% on the news — the steepest single-day drop since July 17 — coming the same week Sam Altman put OpenAI's IPO plans on hold over safety concerns, a combination that likely amplified investor unease about both the financing structure and the underlying investment's near-term liquidity path.

What This Means for AI Infrastructure Financing

A single AI-focused investor requiring nearly $65 billion in committed capital, financed through an increasingly complex stack of loans, bridge facilities, and potential bond issuances, is a specific signal of just how capital-intensive the current AI investment landscape has become — a useful data point for evaluating the broader financial sustainability of the AI infrastructure buildout beyond any single company's balance sheet.