By Echo Wang
July 1 - SoftBank Group has reopened talks with a consortium of lenders for a $10 billion loan backed by its stake in OpenAI, after earlier attempts to secure a loan stalled over concerns about the difficulty of valuing private companies, two people familiar with the matter said.
To make lenders more comfortable, the Japanese technology investor is offering to guarantee repayment of the loan, giving banks recourse to SoftBank if the OpenAI shares pledged as collateral lose value, the people
said.
The lending consortium is expected to include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Mizuho Financial Group, the people said.
SoftBank and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Mizuho declined to comment.
The funding is part of SoftBank’s efforts to finance its ambitious artificial intelligence investment strategy, the people said. The financing, known as a margin loan, acts like a line of credit.
Initially, SoftBank asked for the loan to be backed solely by its stake in the ChatGPT maker, but banks pushed back because they would have no claim on SoftBank beyond the shares if the collateral lost value, the people added. Under that structure, SoftBank would not have been obligated to repay the debt.
The talks highlight lenders' greater caution toward loans backed by stakes in privately held companies, whose valuations are harder to assess and whose shares are more difficult to sell than publicly traded stock.
Reuters was unable to determine whether lenders also have specific concerns about OpenAI’s valuation. The valuation of major AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic has ballooned in the past years amid intensifying competition for leadership in artificial intelligence.
SoftBank has become one of the world's biggest backers of OpenAI under founder Masayoshi Son's push to make the Japanese conglomerate a dominant investor in artificial intelligence. It has committed more than $60 billion to OpenAI and related AI infrastructure projects, including the Stargate data center venture announced alongside OpenAI and Oracle last year.
SoftBank has relied heavily on debt and asset-backed financing to fund those investments.
In recent months, the company has explored several financing options tied to its investment portfolio. Last year, it sought to raise a $5 billion margin loan backed by shares in chip designer Arm Holdings, whose stock has surged amid investor enthusiasm for AI.
Unlike the OpenAI financing, the Arm loan was backed by shares in a publicly traded company, making the collateral easier for lenders to value and liquidate if necessary.
SoftBank had previously sought to raise at least $10 billion through a margin loan backed by its OpenAI stake before reducing the target to about $6 billion, after encountering hesitation from lenders, Bloomberg News reported earlier.
OpenAI confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering in June, which could ultimately make SoftBank's stake easier for lenders to value and eventually liquidate.
SoftBank also faces a March 2027 deadline to repay a $40 billion bridge loan that helped to finance its OpenAI investment. SoftBank has said that borrowing would likely be repaid “through the utilization of existing assets and other financing measures.”
SoftBank's Son has accelerated the company's spending on AI this year, making investments spanning data centers, semiconductors and robotics as he seeks to position the conglomerate at the center of the industry's rapid expansion.
(Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Edmund Klamann)
