SoftBank Group is seeking a loan of up to $40 billion to finance its expanding investment in OpenAI, according to Bloomberg report. The proposed bridge loan would have an approximate 12-month tenor and is expected to be underwritten by several lenders, including JPMorgan Chase.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has positioned artificial intelligence as a central pillar of the company’s investment strategy. SoftBank held roughly an 11% stake in OpenAI at the end of last year and has continued to increase its exposure to the company as the AI sector attracts record capital.
The financing effort follows OpenAI’s recent $110 billion funding round backed by SoftBank, Nvidia, and Amazon. The capital is expected to support expanded computing capacity and global deployment of AI systems as OpenAI scales its enterprise and consumer platforms.
Meanwhile, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently indicated that the chipmaker’s $30 billion investment in OpenAI may be its final funding commitment before the company pursues a public listing, while also suggesting its $10 billion investment in Anthropic could mark the end of its backing for major AI model developers.
