SoftBank Has Bet $64 Billion on One Company — and the Credit Agencies Are Circling

Quick Answer: SoftBank is committing a further $30 billion to OpenAI as part of a $110 billion funding round that values the company at $840 billion. The move brings SoftBank’s total OpenAI exposure to $64.6 billion and a 13% stake — prompting S&P to downgrade the Japanese conglomerate’s credit outlook from stable to negative.

Masayoshi Son has never been accused of thinking small. The SoftBank founder bet billions on Alibaba before most Western investors had heard of it, poured money into WeWork long after the warning signs were obvious, and bankrolled the Vision Fund era of venture excess with a conviction that bordered on ideological. Now, he is going further than ever — and this time, the asset is artificial intelligence itself.

SoftBank has confirmed a $30 billion investment in OpenAI as part of a landmark $110 billion funding round that also includes $30 billion from Nvidia and $50 billion from Amazon. The round is one of the largest private capital raises on record and comes ahead of OpenAI’s expected IPO later this year. Gulf Business With the latest injection, SoftBank’s total investment in OpenAI reaches $64.6 billion, representing an ownership interest of approximately 13%. The Japan Times

That is a staggering concentration of capital in a single private company. S&P Global calculates that OpenAI will now represent around 30% of SoftBank’s investment assets — on a par with its stake in chip designer Arm Holdings — while the additional investment is likely to push SoftBank’s total investment portfolio above $320 billion. Silicon Republic

The ratings agency is not impressed. S&P has lowered SoftBank’s credit outlook from stable to negative, maintaining a long-term issuer credit rating of BB+ — below investment grade. S&P concluded that OpenAI is among SoftBank’s investments with the “weakest” credit quality, and that the concentration in AI start-ups including SambaNova, Wayve and ABB Robotics exposes the group to significant AI innovation risk. Silicon Republic The agency warned that the scale of the OpenAI bet will delay SoftBank’s ability to restore the liquidity and quality of its assets, and that any recovery will likely require meaningful asset sales — the timing and scale of which remain unclear.

To fund the commitment, SoftBank is pursuing a bridge loan of up to $40 billion, with JP Morgan among the four lenders involved. The loan is expected to carry a roughly 12-month tenor, with talks still ongoing and terms subject to change. The American Bazaar SoftBank has already been selling assets to raise capital, including offloading part of its Nvidia stake, even as it increases its margin loans against SoftBank Corp and Arm Holdings.

The circular logic of the deal has not gone unnoticed. Nvidia invests $30 billion in OpenAI, which then uses the capital to buy Nvidia GPUs; Amazon invests $50 billion and secures OpenAI as an AWS customer; Microsoft retains its position as exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI’s APIs. StartupHub.ai Each party is, in effect, financing its own future revenues through the same vehicle. It is an arrangement that sustains valuations as much as it funds operations — and one that some market observers have flagged as structurally fragile.

For Son, the logic is more elemental. He has long described AI as the defining technology of the century, and OpenAI, for all its losses, now reports a $20 billion annual revenue run rate and over 900 million weekly active ChatGPT users. The prospect of an IPO — potentially in the second half of 2026 — represents SoftBank’s clearest route to crystallising value from years of aggressive positioning. The question is whether Son’s timing holds, and whether OpenAI’s commercial trajectory can justify a valuation that now stands at $840 billion for a company yet to turn a profit.

This is not an isolated bet. As Google commits $185 billion to AI infrastructure and Meta continues to pour capital into its own AI stack, the arms race dynamic is forcing every major technology investor to take a position. Even in Europe, as a British scientist bids for a $1 billion seed round to build rival superintelligence, the sense is that the window for entry is closing fast. The 10 tech companies most worth watching in 2026 are overwhelmingly those with the deepest AI infrastructure exposure.

Son’s bet is not irrational. But at $64.6 billion in a single company, with borrowed money and a credit rating already under pressure, the margin for error has essentially disappeared.

Why has S&P downgraded SoftBank’s credit outlook? S&P downgraded SoftBank’s outlook to negative because the additional $30 billion OpenAI investment increases the group’s exposure to a company with weak credit quality, worsens its loan-to-value ratio, and delays any improvement in the liquidity of its investment assets.