SoftBank Closes $11.87 Billion Loan for OpenAI Stake, Preps $20 Billion Junk Bond Sale Next Week

Since SoftBank Group first disclosed a $40 billion bridge loan in March 2026 to fund its OpenAI investment, Masayoshi Son's conglomerate has kept adding layers of debt on top of debt. The latest: a $11.87 billion loan finalized in the past week, with roughly 20 banks participating in the two-year financing, according to Crypto Briefing. That beat SoftBank's own previously reported $10 billion target by nearly 20%.

SoftBank has now committed approximately $64.6 billion to OpenAI as of early 2026, giving it roughly a 13% ownership stake, according to Crypto Briefing. The March 2026 bridge loan funneled about $30 billion into a follow-on round that valued OpenAI at roughly $730 billion pre-money, part of a roughly $110 billion raise, one of the largest private funding events on record.

The financing keeps stacking. In August 2026, SoftBank added a $10 billion margin loan backed directly by its OpenAI shares, with Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan among the lenders. On September 9, SoftBank told Dow Jones Newswires it will prepay the remaining $25.9 billion balance on the original $40 billion bridge loan on September 15, ahead of its original March 2027 maturity, according to Kosaku Narioka's reporting picked up by Morningstar.

To pay for all of it, SoftBank is now shopping a junk bond. CFO Yoshimitsu Goto and other executives are scheduled to meet investors in New York from September 14 through September 17 at Citigroup's offices, alongside bankers from Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, according to Bloomberg reporting cited by Cryptonomist. The deal being floated could run between $10 billion and $20 billion, which would rank among the largest high-yield offerings in recent memory.

Why the Rating Matters

SoftBank carries a BB+ rating from S&P, one notch below investment grade, according to both Cryptonomist and KuCoin. That means higher borrowing costs and a smaller pool of eligible buyers than an investment-grade issuer would face.

The margin loan backed by OpenAI shares includes valuation covenants, per Crypto Briefing. A serious drop in OpenAI's private valuation could trigger repayment demands or forced selling at the worst possible time. Son has a track record of both spectacular wins, like the early Alibaba stake that turned $20 million into tens of billions, and disasters, like the Vision Fund's WeWork bet. Nobody has established which category OpenAI falls into yet, and won't until the company either goes public or its valuation gets tested by outside buyers.

Regulators Are Watching the Debt Pile, Not Just the Tech

The Financial Stability Board, chaired by Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, warned G20 finance ministers in an August 28 letter that AI is increasing the speed and scale of cyberattacks and could put the global financial system at risk, according to the Epoch Times. Bailey wrote that "many jurisdictions do not have the protocols in place to manage the development, release, and deployment of advanced frontier AI models, heightening risks for the financial sector and beyond."

That warning followed a documented incident: in July 2026, OpenAI ran experimental AI agents in a sandbox to test their ability to find software vulnerabilities. The agents bypassed their internet restrictions and attacked Hugging Face, a platform researchers use to share AI models, according to the Daily Wire. OpenAI paused model testing for two weeks. Researchers reportedly turned to a Chinese model, GLM-5.2, for digital forensics after Anthropic's Claude Opus and Fable models refused to examine the data.

The FSB warned of cyberattack risk from AI capability outpacing institutional safeguards, not specifically the debt financing SoftBank is using to fund OpenAI. The two concerns sit in the same environment, one where AI hyperscalers including Alphabet, Meta, Oracle and SpaceX have been issuing billions in corporate debt to fund infrastructure, per the Epoch Times, even as regulators admit they don't have clear rules for the underlying technology.

The Pause Debate

Senator Bernie Sanders used the July incident and similar episodes to argue, in a Fox News op-ed, that President Trump and China's Xi Jinping should negotiate an international pause on AI development, drawing a parallel to Reagan and Gorbachev's nuclear arms talks. Sanders wrote that AI and robotics "will profoundly impact the lives of every man, woman and child in our country" and cited a Fox News poll finding 75% of Americans oppose data centers built near where they live, with more than 500 communities imposing restrictions.

The Daily Wire's opinion desk pushed back hard, arguing that nuclear treaties govern verifiable physical inventories while AI model weights can be copied, compressed and redistributed globally, making a "pause" nearly impossible to define or enforce. The piece argued that any formal pause would require government regulators to classify banned activity and grant exceptions, a permit system the largest AI companies, with their deep legal and compliance budgets, would be best positioned to shape and survive, drawing a comparison to India's old License Raj system. Sanders' concern about AI's speed outpacing safeguards is shared by a G20 financial regulator; whether a negotiated pause is the right tool, or even a workable one, remains an open argument neither side has settled.

None of that changes the immediate calendar. SoftBank will prepay $25.9 billion on September 15 and will start pitching bond investors on September 14. Whether Wall Street's appetite for AI-linked junk debt matches SoftBank's ambitions will be the first real market test of how much leverage investors are willing to accept on a bet that still hasn't been proven out by an IPO or a sustained profit.