SoftBank Finishes $64.6 Billion OpenAI Bet, Then Son Warns Superintelligence Could Turn 'Super Dangerous'

Since SoftBank paid the third and final $10 billion installment on its OpenAI commitment on October 1, Japan time, the company has gone from quietly closing a financing deal to publicly worrying about the technology it just spent its fortune on.

SoftBank Group confirmed through its Vision Fund 2 that it has now invested $64.6 billion total in OpenAI, giving it roughly a 13% stake, according to The Next Web. The $30 billion follow-on commitment was agreed in late February and paid in three equal $10 billion tranches on April 1, July 1, and October 1. It was part of OpenAI's broader $122 billion funding round that valued the ChatGPT maker at $852 billion, with Amazon committing up to $50 billion and Nvidia matching SoftBank's $30 billion.

How Son paid for it

To cover the bill, Masayoshi Son sold SoftBank's entire 32.1 million share stake in Nvidia by the end of 2025, raising about $5.8 billion, according to KuCoin's financial analysis. Son later told the Tokyo FII Priority Asia forum he sold the Nvidia shares "with tears," calling them one of the best investments of his life, with early stakes returning more than 30 times.

SoftBank also issued $11.1 billion in foreign-currency junk bonds on September 24, which Reuters described as the world's largest high-yield corporate bond sale on record, The Next Web reported. Yields ran as high as 9.75%, according to KuCoin, meaning SoftBank now owes more than $400 million a year in interest alone on debt tied to a company that pays no dividend.

SoftBank separately drew $30 billion against a $40 billion bridge loan signed with banks in March, then repaid $25.9 billion of it early in September and canceled the unused $10 billion portion on September 30, per The Next Web. The net effect, as KuCoin's analysis put it, is that SoftBank swapped short-term bank pressure for a decade of near-10% borrowing costs. This is a bet that only pays off if OpenAI's valuation keeps climbing. As of the end of June, SoftBank's internal models valued its OpenAI stake at $89.6 billion against $44.6 billion invested, an unrealized $45 billion gain, KuCoin noted, but that figure comes from internal valuation, not a market transaction. SoftBank also carries a $10 billion loan secured by its OpenAI shares, adding leverage on top of leverage.

KuCoin's reporting also flagged that SoftBank's stock fell 5.6% the day the OpenAI payment was announced, then dropped another 6% the following day. Market reaction suggests investors are not fully buying Son's bet.

Son's warning in Kyoto

Days after the final payment cleared, Son appeared at the Science and Technology in Society forum in Kyoto alongside White House science and technology policy advisor Michael Kratsios, who unveiled a 17-nation initiative to deploy AI for scientific research, according to Bloomberg as reported by the Times of India. Delegates from Japan, South Korea, the UK, Germany, Singapore and the UAE joined the announcement. China was not among the initial signatories.

Son told the forum, "We don't have any more luxury of having human fight against humans," warning that superintelligence falling into the wrong hands could turn "super dangerous," per Bloomberg. The remarks come amid a string of AI security breaches in recent months, Bloomberg reported, though the Times of India's coverage of Son's comments made no mention of SoftBank's debt load or the Nvidia stock sale that funded his OpenAI bet. That financial picture only shows up in the separate reporting from KuCoin and The Next Web.

AMD cashes in while Nvidia doubles down

The same week, AMD closed at a record $633.91 on October 2, pushing its market value above $1 trillion, according to StartupFortune. The rally is tied to firm orders: Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is deploying an initial 50,000 AMD Instinct MI450 GPUs starting in the third quarter of 2026, and OpenAI has committed to a 6-gigawatt, multi-generation buildout on the same chip, with AMD issuing OpenAI a warrant for up to 160 million AMD shares tied to deployment milestones.

Nvidia isn't sitting out. StartupFortune reported Nvidia is in talks to guarantee up to $250 billion for OpenAI's Ohio data center buildout, with separate discussions covering $350 billion more in chip financing, pushing Nvidia's total AI deal exposure past $750 billion. OpenAI has also signed a letter of intent for at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia systems, with Nvidia planning to invest up to $100 billion as that capacity comes online in the second half of 2026.

A reasonable skeptic would point out these are the same circular-financing arrangements that have drawn scrutiny all year: chipmakers extending credit and equity to the very company buying their hardware, with OpenAI itself still unprofitable and reliant on outside capital to fund compute it hasn't paid for yet. StartupFortune itself flagged that the Nvidia-OpenAI financing "reignites circular-financing concerns."

SoftBank hasn't said when it expects a return on the $64.6 billion, and OpenAI has no public listing or dividend plan on record. The next real test comes when SoftBank reports results for the half-year ending in September, which will show whether markets are willing to value the OpenAI stake anywhere near Son's internal $89.6 billion mark, or whether the company's borrowing costs start eating into that bet faster than the AI boom can cover it.