SoftBank Is Betting Its OpenAI Shares on an IPO. Now It Is Stacking Debt on Top.
SoftBank is seeking a $10B margin loan backed by its OpenAI shares — the first time Son has put the actual equity at risk of transfer, not just cash.
Masayoshi Son has done something he has never done before with OpenAI: put the shares themselves at risk of transfer.
Bloomberg News reported Thursday that SoftBank Group is seeking a $10 billion margin loan backed by its OpenAI stake — a secured loan, meaning if OpenAI's valuation falls before the loan matures, SoftBank doesn't just carry debt it can't repay. It hands over the underlying shares. That is the first time SoftBank has structured its OpenAI financing this way.
Three weeks ago, SoftBank closed a $40 billion unsecured bridge loan from JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho, SMBC, and MUFG, maturing March 2027, according to Reuters. Unsecured means no specific assets were pledged — the banks were betting on an OpenAI IPO or secondary share sale to get their money back, not on SoftBank's balance sheet. Now SoftBank is going back to those same banks with a second, smaller facility that treats OpenAI equity as actual collateral. Son is running two distinct bets on the same position: one on the IPO clock, one that risks transferring the underlying shares if the clock runs wrong.
The scale of what SoftBank has already committed is the only reason this matters. SoftBank holds roughly 11% of OpenAI, accumulated through a commitment of about $40 billion to $41 billion that began in 2024 and was fully drawn by the end of 2025. To get there, Son sold SoftBank's entire stake in Nvidia — worth $5.8 billion at the time — and offloaded about $4.8 billion of its T-Mobile US position. He also froze most other Vision Fund dealmaking; anything above $50 million now requires his direct sign-off. The OpenAI bet has crowded out everything else in the portfolio.
On paper the position looks strong. OpenAI's $110 billion funding round in February 2026 valued the company at roughly $840 billion, with Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank each contributing tens of billions. At 11%, SoftBank's stake is worth somewhere north of $90 billion, so a $10 billion margin loan against it would be borrowing against a substantial paper gain. But OpenAI shares are not publicly traded. SoftBank cannot sell them on an exchange. If OpenAI's valuation compresses — a failed IPO filing, a competitive loss, a broader AI sector correction — SoftBank faces a margin call on shares it cannot easily liquidate.
The March 2027 maturity on the $40 billion bridge loan is the clearest signal of what the banks were thinking. Twelve months is tight for a loan that size without an exit mechanism baked in, and the unsecured structure only makes sense if lenders were confident about an IPO or secondary before the note came due. Market speculation centers on a potential filing in the second half of 2026, with a listing in late 2026 or early 2027. If that happens, both loans resolve cleanly. If it slips, the margin call sits on top of an unsecured loan that is already counting on an exit event.
What SoftBank plans to do with the $10 billion is not specified in the Bloomberg report. The company and OpenAI both declined to comment.
The pattern echoes SoftBank's dot-com era, when Son borrowed against SoftBank's Yahoo and Yahoo Japan shares at the top of the market — a bet that went badly when the internet bubble burst. The Vision Fund later deployed considerable leverage alongside equity in its earlier bets, amplifying both gains and losses, with WeWork's near-collapse a textbook example. What is different now is the asset: OpenAI is not a coworking company with questionable unit economics. It is the leading AI laboratory, with real revenue and a governance structure preparing for a public listing. The equity is real. The question is what happens to a margin loan against it if the path to IPO is longer or bumpier than the banks' March 2027 deadline assumes. Whether this is clever or reckless depends entirely on whether OpenAI IPOs on schedule.
