Douglas Turner
SoftBank Group is back at the negotiating table with a group of banks over a $10 billion loan secured by its holding in OpenAI, according to people familiar with the discussions, after an earlier attempt to line up the financing hit a snag.
Why The Deal Stalled The First Time
The original sticking point had nothing to do with SoftBank's creditworthiness. Lenders balked at the challenge of putting a reliable price tag on a stake in a private company. OpenAI does not trade on any public exchange, so there is no ticker, no daily closing price, no market cap to check each morning. That makes collateral valuation a judgment call rather than a simple lookup, and banks tend to get nervous when the value of what they are lending against is a matter of opinion.
To get the talks moving again, SoftBank is reportedly sweetening the terms. Rather than asking banks to rely solely on the OpenAI shares as security, the company is offering to personally guarantee repayment. In practice, that means if the pledged stake loses value or becomes hard to liquidate, the lenders would have recourse to SoftBank itself, not just the collateral sitting on the books.
Who Is Expected To Join The Lending Group
People familiar with the matter say the consortium being assembled includes some of the biggest names in global finance: Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase and Mizuho Financial Group. None of the three banks commented publicly when asked, and both SoftBank and OpenAI stayed silent as well when reached for a response.
The scale of the loan, $10 billion, underscores how much capital SoftBank has tied up in its OpenAI position and how eager it appears to unlock liquidity against that stake without actually selling shares. SoftBank has been one of OpenAI's most prominent backers as the ChatGPT maker has raised money at increasingly large valuations, and a loan of this size would let SoftBank tap into that paper wealth while keeping its ownership intact.
What A Personal Guarantee Signals About Risk Appetite
Offering a repayment guarantee is not a small concession. It shifts risk away from the banks and back onto SoftBank's own balance sheet, which suggests the company is willing to absorb more exposure in order to get financing done on a stake that is otherwise tough to price. For lenders, that guarantee effectively turns a bet on OpenAI's private valuation into something closer to a bet on SoftBank's own ability to pay, which is a very different risk calculation and one that established banks are generally more comfortable underwriting.
What Happens If Terms Are Finalized
No final agreement has been announced, and the companies involved have not confirmed details publicly. Whether Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Mizuho ultimately sign on, and on what exact terms, remains to be settled as talks continue.
Dean Porter
Curtis Hernandez
