The $10 billion due to OpenAI on completes a $30 billion follow-on stake, and SoftBank is paying for it with debt. Its stock rose more than 7% in Tokyo.
SoftBank Group has borrowed the money for its last OpenAI check.
The Tokyo-based investor raised about $11.1 billion on Thursday, selling $10 billion of senior notes in dollars and 1 billion euros, about $1.14 billion, in euros. Nearly all of it has one destination. SoftBank owes OpenAI $10 billion on , the last of three installments on a $30 billion follow-on stake, and whatever is left over goes to general corporate uses.
By that arithmetic, about 90% of the deal is an OpenAI financing.
Investors in Tokyo, trading for the first time this week after a three-day holiday, pushed SoftBank shares up more than 7%.
Paying for the stake with bonds has a clear trade-off. SoftBank takes on fixed interest costs now for an equity position in a company whose shares do not trade, and whose value it can only realize at some later date. Its own credit becomes more closely tied to how that private holding performs.
SoftBank's other AI bets point the same way. It is OpenAI's and Oracle's partner in Stargate, and a party to the $400 billion agreement covering five U.S. data center sites. One of them, Project Jupiter in New Mexico, drew a force majeure notice from Oracle to its developer on Thursday. SB Energy, SoftBank's power and data center unit, delayed its planned listing to October after investors resisted its valuation target.
The timing was not friendly to borrowers. Government bond yields rose around the world on Thursday, with Japan's 10-year at its highest since 1996 and the U.S. 30-year at its highest since 2004.
Once the payment goes through, SoftBank's follow-on commitment is complete. The numbers to track after that are its leverage, which now carries the full $30 billion stake, and the valuation OpenAI's next funding round places on that holding.