The $40bn bridge loan that SoftBank Group took out in March to fund its OpenAI investment has been repaid or cancelled in full, six months before it was due. SoftBank said on 1 October that it had paid the third and final $10bn of its $30bn follow-on investment in OpenAI, using money raised from bonds, and that it now owns about 13% of the ChatGPT maker.
The investment was SoftBank’s share of a $110bn round OpenAI announced on 27 February at a pre-money valuation of $730bn, alongside $30bn from NVIDIA and $50bn from Amazon. Bloomberg reported on 6 March, citing people familiar with the matter, that SoftBank was seeking a loan of up to $40bn to pay for its part. Reuters carried the report and, according to TechStartups, said it could not independently confirm it. Bloomberg’s sources described a bridge of about 12 months underwritten by four lenders including JPMorgan Chase; the facility SoftBank actually signed three weeks later had five. The deal is now tracked on TSN’s AI funding rounds hub.
Five banks lent $40bn for one year
SoftBank’s own disclosure of 27 March set out the facility: $40.0bn, about ¥6.38tn, lent to SoftBank Group and a wholly owned subsidiary by JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and MUFG Bank. It was unsecured, due on 25 March 2027 and meant “primarily” for the OpenAI investment.
The February agreement split the $30bn into three $10bn tranches, paid through SoftBank Vision Fund 2 on 1 April, 1 July and 1 October, Japan time. SoftBank said it would fund them first with bridge loans and then from existing assets. On the first payment date it borrowed $10bn under the facility, and it did the same in July.
Repayment came in September, then the bonds
On 9 September, SoftBank said it would prepay the whole outstanding balance of $25.9bn on 15 September. By then it had drawn $30.0bn of the $40bn in total, so some had already been repaid. The notice did not say where the money for the prepayment came from.
Two weeks later it priced about $11.1bn of senior notes in dollars and euros, with the proceeds earmarked for the last OpenAI tranche. The dollar notes pay 8.625% to 2030, 9.25% to 2032 and 9.75% to 2034, on $1bn, $4.5bn and $4.5bn. Two €500m notes pay 7.125% to 2030 and 8.0% to 2032. S&P and Fitch both rated them BB+.
SoftBank cancelled the remaining $10bn of unused capacity with effect from 30 September. With the third tranche paid on 1 October, its total investment in OpenAI reached $64.6bn. It has said no borrowings or commitments remain under the facility.
Rated bonds now carry the last $10bn
The swap matters because the two kinds of debt behave differently. A bridge loan must be paid back within a year and leaves a company exposed if markets close. Bonds running to 2030, 2032 and 2034 push that refinancing risk years out, at a known price. That price is high: coupons of up to 9.75% on bonds rated BB+, one notch below investment grade, are what SoftBank now pays to own a larger slice of a company that is not yet listed. SoftBank’s own guardrail is its loan-to-value policy, which it says it keeps below 25% in normal times with a 35% upper limit, and its pledge to hold cash for at least two years of bond redemptions. Those are the numbers to watch in its next results. Behind them sits a wager that AI demand turns into revenue, the shift TSN described in March as autonomous AI systems moving from pilots into production.
The bridge worked because it was short
The original March story was about the size of the loan. The real test was whether SoftBank could get out of it, and it did so in about five and a half months. Other AI borrowers are using the same tool: Nebius has signed a $3.5bn one-year bridge facility with Citi. SoftBank’s payoff now depends on OpenAI’s growth, which Bloomberg reports it expects to reach at least $70bn in annualised revenue by the end of 2026, and on how public markets value AI labs, a question Anthropic’s IPO filing is about to put to investors.
Sources
- SoftBank Group: Follow-on investments in OpenAI, 27 February 2026
- OpenAI: Scaling AI for everyone, 27 February 2026
- SoftBank Group: Execution of bridge facility agreement, 27 March 2026
- SoftBank Group: First tranche executed, 1 April 2026
- SoftBank Group: Second tranche executed, 1 July 2026
- SoftBank Group: Early repayment of bridge loans, 9 September 2026
- SoftBank Group: Issuance of foreign currency-denominated senior notes, 24 September 2026
- SoftBank Group: Third and final tranche executed, 1 October 2026
- Bloomberg: SoftBank seeks loan of up to $40 billion for OpenAI stake, 6 March 2026
- Reuters: SoftBank seeks up to $40 billion loan to finance OpenAI investment (Bloomberg News), 6 March 2026
- TechStartups: SoftBank seeks $40B loan to fund massive OpenAI bet, 6 March 2026
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