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**SoftBank’s Son Goes on a New Borrowing Binge to Fund AI**

The tech investor is in talks to borrow $16 billion, with potentially more to come

By Juro Osawa and Cory Weinberg

Mar 1, 2025, 8:00am PST

The biggest risk-taker in tech investing is back to his old playbook, loading up on debt to fund his latest obsession: artificial intelligence.

SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son is planning to borrow $16 billion to invest in AI, his company's executives told banks last week, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions. The talks haven't been previously reported. The company might borrow another $8 billion in early 2026, the executives also told bankers.

**The Takeaway**

- SoftBank is in talks to borrow $16 billion to fund AI, just after borrowing $18.5 billion.

- It's another borrowing binge for CEO Masayoshi Son, who has sometimes struggled to pay off loans.

- SoftBank's investment in OpenAI and data-center project Stargate is one of the company's biggest ever.

This could strain SoftBank's already debt-heavy balance sheet. The new loan discussions come after SoftBank recently arranged to borrow $18.5 billion using its stake in British chip designer Arm Holdings as part of its collateral. Some of that money will be used to refinance existing debt.

Son put himself at the center of the AI boom when he stood next to President Donald Trump at the White House during the announcement for Stargate, the giant data center project tied to OpenAI. SoftBank is investing in AI, chips, data centers, and energy. He pledged to invest $30 billion in AI startup OpenAI, among other bets.

Son is doing what he's always done when he's excited about an investment—borrowing. He founded SoftBank in 1981 and since then has gone through several cycles of building up debt, then paying it down, often under pressure after investments fail to meet his lofty expectations.

He's only recently finished paying down debt from major losses on investments such as WeWork that were part of his Vision Fund. He borrowed heavily to buy mobile carrier Sprint, which he struggled to sell after business slowed. An earlier borrowing binge in the 1990s almost bankrupted Son.

"You have to respect a guy who bets on his conviction," said venture capitalist Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures, speaking at The Information's AI Agenda Live event on Thursday.

Son's planned investments in OpenAI and Stargate would be one of SoftBank's largest bets ever. OpenAI has told investors that SoftBank's investment would put the AI company's valuation at $260 billion. That's on top of the $18 billion SoftBank plans to invest in Stargate, as The Information previously reported. Son will be Stargate's chair, and SoftBank will be responsible for its finances.

Those investments significantly exceed the $31 billion in cash SoftBank had on its balance sheet at the end of December, making it necessary to arrange big loans. So far, SoftBank's own shareholders are comfortable with the company's current debt levels, in part because they have seen far riskier situations in the past, analysts say.

The loans are expected to come from major Japanese banks and global lenders. Top Japanese banks such as Mizuho Bank, SoftBank's main lender, are expected to keep backing SoftBank because the company is a valuable client when few other Japanese companies want to borrow much.

But even so, Son's huge bets on startups with very high valuations such as OpenAI raise questions about future returns, which determine SoftBank's ability to continue its debt-fueled deals in the long run.

Apart from loans, SoftBank has few other obvious ways to raise new cash without selling more of its stake in publicly traded Arm Holdings, a linchpin of its AI strategy. Many of its largest holdings from the Vision Fund, including ByteDance, Fanatics, and Didi Global, remain private.

That leaves the company to fall back on its borrowing capacity, which already includes $29 billion in net debt. SoftBank executives told banks during a conference call last week the $16 billion loan would finance part of its investment in OpenAI and part of its planned acquisition of chip design firm Ampere, according to the person with knowledge of the discussions.

During the call, SoftBank executives discussed potential future investments, such as more AI deals and data center acquisitions in the U.S. and Europe, as well as nuclear power and other energy-related deals in the U.S.

For decades, Son has financed his aggressive dealmaking with equally aggressive borrowing. When he launched his Vision Fund in 2017, it raised about $100 billion through a combination of preferred debt and equity. Then in 2018, Son borrowed $8 billion using SoftBank's stake in Alibaba as collateral. In the early days of the Vision Fund, Son said that by backing tech startups, SoftBank was playing its part in an "information revolution" that would reshape the world.

"Masa's impulse was to push leverage to the limit," wrote Alok Sama, a former SoftBank executive, in his book "The Money Trap," about his time working for Son.

But some of the Vision Fund's largest bets turned sour. The biggest flop, WeWork, resulted in a loss of billions of dollars for the fund. During SoftBank's annual shareholder meeting in 2023, Son described his WeWork investment as a "black mark" in his career and said it was all his own fault because he didn't listen to his executives, who were opposed to the idea of doubling down on WeWork.

That failure highlighted the risk of overpaying for unicorns with already high valuations. It also highlighted the risk of capital-heavy investments that rely on debt.

Son is not alone in borrowing to fund the AI buildout. Meta is in talks to borrow roughly $35 billion to develop data centers in the U.S., Bloomberg reported.

For a while, Son seemed to have learned a lesson and was taking a cautious stance toward new deals. In 2022, Son said he wanted to be "more careful when we invest new money."

But the global generative AI boom in the past two years has reignited his appetite for huge deals. And the rise of Arm's share price after its 2023 initial public offering provided him with more capacity to borrow.

Son is once again touting a grand vision behind his AI investments, saying SoftBank's mission is to contribute to the progress of mankind through the realization of "artificial superintelligence," which will be 10,000 times smarter than a human brain, within the next decade. At a SoftBank event in Tokyo last month, Son held a crystal ball in his hand and said a magic crystal ball in science fiction is about to become reality with AI.

"This reminds me of the beginning of the internet," Son said of his current AI investments, during his onstage discussion with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the Tokyo event. "People initially said, 'The internet is just virtual stuff. It's not really useful. It's mostly free service, so there is no business model.' All those criticisms seem [like] nonsense now," Son said.

Son's early enthusiasm for the internet almost wiped him out. In the 1990s, Son bought the Comdex trade show and PC Magazine publisher Ziff Davis. He invested in numerous tech firms including Yahoo, which was then still a small startup. But when the tech bubble burst in 2000, Son almost went bankrupt, as SoftBank's Tokyo-listed stock lost nearly 99% of its value.

To be sure, Son also invested in Alibaba, which then was a tiny startup less than a year old. That investment later became one of the most successful venture capital deals ever when Alibaba went public in New York in 2014 in a record IPO raising $25 billion.

And some of his debt-fueled deals did work out. In 2006, SoftBank borrowed heavily to buy U.K. telecom company Vodafone's Japanese unit for more than $15 billion, a risky bet that in the long run yielded a consistently profitable business. Sprint did eventually merge with T-Mobile, giving SoftBank a decent return on its investment.

"I'm good at borrowing money. I think debt is the ingredient for growth," Son said during SoftBank's most recent shareholder meeting last June.

Juro Osawa is a reporter covering tech in Asia, from Alibaba and Tencent to startups. He previously worked for The Wall Street Journal. He is based in Hong Kong and can be found on Twitter at @JuroOsawa.

Cory Weinberg is deputy bureau chief responsible for finance coverage at The Information. He covers late-stage private tech firms, IPOs, and capital markets, and is based in New York. He has an MBA from Columbia Business School. He can be found on Twitter @coryweinberg.