SoftBank turns to $11 billion in bonds to fund its OpenAI bet

SoftBank has launched a bond sale worth more than $11 billion, with most of the proceeds intended for the next $10 billion payment in its expanded investment in OpenAI, due to close on October 1. The package combines $10 billion of dollar bonds with €1 billion of euro bonds; any remaining money is earmarked for general corporate purposes. These are high-yield, or “junk,” bonds—debt that must offer investors higher returns because it carries more credit risk than investment-grade borrowing. The deal shows how Masayoshi Son’s huge bet on the maker of ChatGPT is becoming a financing challenge as well as an investment thesis: SoftBank is borrowing at scale to keep funding it, in what could be one of the largest speculative-grade corporate bond sales on record.