SoftBank Is Using Its OpenAI Stake as an ATM — and That Should Worry You
Instead of selling its OpenAI shares and booking gains, SoftBank is borrowing $10B against them. The same move Masayoshi Son made during Japan’s bubble era — and the same risk if OpenAI’s IPO misfires.
Masayoshi Son is running the same trade he ran during Japan's 1980s bubble — and the same one he ran with Yahoo in the late 1990s. SoftBank is now seeking a $10 billion margin loan backed by its OpenAI shares, using the stake as collateral to raise cash without selling it, Bloomberg reported. The move lets Son keep his OpenAI exposure intact through an IPO while extracting liquidity from it — a leveraged bet on unlisted equity at the exact moment that equity approaches public markets.
In 1988, Japanese securities firms and banks used rising stock prices as collateral to borrow and buy more stock, amplifying both the rally and the eventual crash. When the Nikkei 225 peaked in December 1989 and fell 63 percent over the next two years, the collateral base that had justified the borrowing vanished while the debt remained. Son was building SoftBank through that period. He ran the same pattern with Yahoo: used the stake as collateral for loans that funded further bets, then absorbed the reversal when the position turned.
The structure of the current loan makes the risk concrete. A margin loan backed by unlisted equity cannot be called and liquidated the way a brokerage account can. If OpenAI's valuation declines before an initial public offering — or if the IPO prices below the private-market peak — the collateral loses value while the debt stays fixed. The loan does not appear as a public debt instrument because the shares securing it cannot be freely traded.
The stake being used as collateral is substantial. SoftBank has invested roughly $64.6 billion in OpenAI across multiple funding rounds, giving it an 11.66 percent stake worth $99.3 billion on paper, Forbes reported — figures also confirmed in our prior coverage. The $10 billion the loan would raise represents about 10 percent of that paper value.
SoftBank faces a funding gap of roughly $35.7 billion based on its current commitments, CreditSights estimated. The margin loan is separate from the $40 billion bridge loan secured in March and the $22.5 billion commitment announced in December. S&P rates SoftBank's bonds BB+, sitting just below investment grade. Euro bonds yield between 6.375 percent and 7.375 percent; dollar bonds range from 7.625 percent to 8.5 percent, Reuters reported.
What makes the current position different from Son's prior bubble trades is the scale and the underlying asset. SoftBank is not reducing its OpenAI exposure ahead of the IPO. It is compounding it. Selling would realize gains and reduce concentration risk. Borrowing against the shares lets Son keep maximum exposure through the listing. Lockup restrictions may be preventing a sale, or this may simply be a deliberate choice to hold the bet rather than take the profit. One is routine capital management. The other is a leveraged position on a single private company's valuation at the moment it goes public.
OpenAI has not filed for an IPO and no date is confirmed. The company raised capital most recently at an $852 billion valuation in March 2026, according to publicly reported funding data.
SoftBank did not respond to a request for comment.
What to watch: the loan agreement's exact terms, including any maintenance covenants that could force action if OpenAI's valuation dips; whether other large OpenAI shareholders like Microsoft or Apple have similar financing arrangements against their stakes; and SoftBank's next earnings report, due in May, which will show whether the loan appears as a liability alongside the equity stake it secures.
