SoftBank brings more banks into $40 billion loan for OpenAI investment

SoftBank is widening the circle of banks willing to finance the holding company's bet on OpenAI. New participants have joined the syndication of the $40 billion bridge loan, and the deal has entered a soft-launch phase of placement among lenders.

Who has joined the syndicate

The new participants reportedly include HSBC, BNP Paribas and Intesa Sanpaolo. They join JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking and MUFG Bank, which were already involved. For the debt market, this is a rare test of appetite for AI deals at this scale: the banks are effectively assessing not only the borrower itself, but also the likelihood that SoftBank's OpenAI investment will turn into a liquid asset fairly quickly.

SoftBank signed the loan on March 27, 2026. It is a 12-month unsecured bridge loan, intended primarily to fund an additional investment in OpenAI through Vision Fund 2. The money went into OpenAI's $110 billion round, the largest private round in history, in which the company's valuation reached $852 billion. After this deal, SoftBank's total stake in OpenAI rose to roughly $64.6 billion.

The soft-launch phase means the syndication has not yet reached full market placement, but the pool of interested lenders is already expanding noticeably. For SoftBank, this is an important signal: the broader the lender base, the easier it is to spread risk, and the lower the chance that a few banks will have to hold too large a share of the loan on their own balance sheets. It also matters that the deal is drawing in not only American and Japanese participants but also major European banks.

• Loan size: $40 billion
• Maturity: up to March 26, 2027
• Collateral: none
• Main purpose: to fund SoftBank's $30 billion investment
• SoftBank's total investment in OpenAI: about $64.6 billion

A bet on the IPO

The key feature of the deal's structure is the absence of collateral. The loan is not secured by OpenAI shares, SoftBank's stake in Arm Holdings or any other specific assets. This means the banks are taking risk on SoftBank's balance sheet as a whole, not on a particular block of securities.

The main conclusion follows from this: the loan looks like a short bridge to a liquidity event that would let SoftBank repay the debt or comfortably replace it with longer-term financing. The most likely such event is an OpenAI IPO, which the market discusses as possible as early as the fourth quarter of 2026. If the listing is pushed back, pressure on SoftBank will grow markedly: the group will have to either find new financing or free up liquidity by selling other assets.

In March, S&P already cut its outlook on the company's credit rating to negative and separately flagged concentration risk: OpenAI may account for about 30% of SoftBank's portfolio. In parallel, the group is discussing a separate $10 billion margin loan secured by OpenAI shares, which makes the whole structure even more debt-dependent.

Masayoshi Son has made big technology bets before, but the current structure stands out for its scale even by SoftBank's standards. The company is not simply increasing its stake in OpenAI; it is doing so with short-term debt, counting on a future revaluation of the asset. In essence, the group is trying to hold and build its position without selling other strong assets. The scheme works as long as the market believes in a quick OpenAI listing, or at least another major liquidity event in the coming months.

What this means

The expansion of the bank syndicate shows that large lenders are ready to finance the AI boom not only through equity and venture rounds, but also through huge corporate loans. For OpenAI, it is an indirect signal of confidence from the debt market; for SoftBank, it is a chance to build its stake without an urgent fire sale of other assets.

But the longer OpenAI stays private, the greater the risk that this bridge loan turns from a convenient tool into an expensive refinancing problem.