SoftBank's biggest bet is its giant stake in OpenAI.
It just learned how hard that bet is to borrow against.
SoftBank wanted to borrow at least $6 billion against its OpenAI stake. The plan was a margin loan, where you pledge something you own and borrow against its value.
Those talks have now stalled. The hangup is value.
OpenAI is private, so there is no stock price to show what the stake is worth. That doubt made some lenders cautious.
This was not the first cut. SoftBank had already trimmed the target from $10 billion to $6 billion after lenders pushed back.
It had lined up around $5 billion before the talks stalled. It was not clear those pledges were firm.
Some lenders had warmed up after OpenAI moved toward going public. The filing gave them a path to a real price down the road.
The wobble spooked the market, and the stock fell as much as 9.7% on Wednesday.
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SoftBank has pledged over $60 billion to OpenAI. Not everyone is comfortable with it.
Strong results from rival Anthropic have made some investors question the bet. A deadline is looming, too.
SoftBank took on $40 billion in short-term financing to fund its OpenAI push. That bill comes due in March 2027.
It does have other ways to raise cash. It could sell more bonds, or borrow against its stakes in Arm and Intel, both of which have roughly tripled this year.
Those stakes are now worth far more than a year ago. That gives SoftBank more to borrow against if it chooses.
SoftBank is spending big elsewhere as well. It plans to put up to about $87 billion into AI data centers in France.
The stock has had a huge run all the same. SoftBank passed Toyota as Japan's most valuable company on June 1, and it has still climbed sharply this year.
Not everyone reads the stall as a warning. Hua Cheng of AllianceBernstein called the margin loan one piece of a larger puzzle, not a red flag on its own.
The best case, he said, is an OpenAI IPO this year that lets SoftBank sell part of its stake and pay down debt. There may be an easier exit on the way.
OpenAI filed confidentially for a US IPO on Monday and could list as soon as the fall. That would finally give the stake a public price tag, and a cleaner way to cash some of it in.
SoftBank bet bigger on OpenAI than anyone. Now it needs a market price to prove the bet.
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