Masa Son is at it again.
The SoftBank CEO was the defining money-spinner of the 2010s, using borrowed money and financial sleight-of-hand to turn the Japanese telecom into a venture giant. Now he’s using the same playbook to double down on the AI boom.
SoftBank disclosed in its earnings report today that it had borrowed $10 billion from a group of global lenders, with its stake in OpenAI serving as collateral for the loan. But that stake itself was partially acquired using a loan from many of those same lenders, filings show; SoftBank said it borrowed $10 billion in July to fund its latest investment in the AI lab. It echoes how Son borrowed against SoftBank’s holdings in Alibaba and Yahoo to free up cash for his obsessions — but at least that collateral was made of profitable businesses.