SoftBank’s $60 Billion OpenAI Bet Sparks Concerns

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1:20Learn more at chase.com slash business. Chase for Business. Make more of what's yours. The Chase mobile app is available for select mobile devices. Message and data rates may apply. JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. Member FDIC. Copyright 2026. JPMorgan Chase and Company. Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. There's been no shortage of drama lately. Surrounding OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman. A jury ruling against Elon Musk in his trial against OpenAI, basically saying that he should have brought this case sooner. Seven months before the killing spree, a chat GPT account linked to shooter Jesse Van Rutzelaar was flagged internally for abuse and enforcement.

2:08A slew of lawsuits have been filed against OpenAI. Elon Musk sued Altman and the company for turning what was a nonprofit into a for-profit business. A jury rejected the claims Monday and Musk said he'll appeal. Then there's the families who accused the company of failing to prevent chatbot interactions that they say contributed to violence and self-harm. The companies denied liability in those lawsuits. There's also reports that OpenAI failed to meet internal sales goals and user targets for its AI bot, ChatGPT. That's made investors nervous. But there's one OpenAI backer who's standing firm, Japan's most famous investor, SoftBank founder and chief executive Masayoshi Son.

2:55Masayoshi Son remains very much committed to Sam Eltman and OpenAI and is seemingly unbased by all these challenges. Min Jong Lee is a technology reporter for Bloomberg based in Tokyo. Son has said over and over how he uses ChatGPT every day.

3:19He loves the app. He loves the technology. He really believes this will continue to change the world in a way that is beneficial to humanity. And I think he genuinely believes Altman is someone who will get us there. But not everyone at SoftBank is as big a believer. Bloomberg spoke to more than a dozen people familiar with the matter, including insiders. They requested anonymity because they're not authorized to speak to the press. But they told Bloomberg that some executives at SoftBank are worried the relationship between Son and Altman isn't exactly equal. Son's support for Altman is very deep and strong, and it goes beyond financial support.

4:07But from Altman's side, what we're seeing is a dynamic where it's very businesslike. That perceived imbalance is especially striking given the scale of Son's commitment. SoftBank has pumped more than$60 billion into OpenAI. That would make SoftBank the company's second largest external shareholder with a nearly 13 % stake. It's also the biggest investment SoftBank has ever made in a single private company. Son has a tendency to really wholeheartedly support a specific type of entrepreneurs. But his devotion to a single company is now being tested with OpenAI, as the AI industry enters a fiercely competitive chapter.

4:59Anthropic has risen at a pace that I think nobody really saw it becoming so successful so fast. And this all kind of adds to the growing uncertainties and the risks of putting such a huge bet into a single company like OpenAI when you don't really know what to expect tomorrow, next month, next year.

5:26This is the Big Tech Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Wan Ha. Every week, we take you inside some of the world's biggest and most powerful economies in the markets, tycoons, and businesses that drive this ever-shifting region. Today on the show, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son's$60 billion bet on Sam Altman and OpenAI, how Son came to make such a big investment in Altman, and why what some say looks like a lopsided relationship is triggering alarms.

6:00Masayoshi Son is one of the most influential figures in tech investing. He started SoftBank in 1981, selling software, and turned it into a$200 billion powerhouse built on making bold bets on tech firms. Over time, Son has become known for spotting winners early. It's a reputation acknowledged by the biggest names in tech, including NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. Here's Huang speaking about Son at an AI summit in Tokyo in 2024. Masa is the only entrepreneur, only innovator in the world that has selected the winner and partnered with the winner in every single generation. In 2000, Son backed a then-unknown Jack Ma with a$20 million investment.

6:48That bet turned into a jackpot when Alibaba went public in 2014 with a valuation of more than$160 billion. That deal kind of really earned him the reputation as a venture capitalist who is able to really foresee what the next big thing is. Bloomberg's Min Jong-li says Son saw something special in OpenAI's Sam Altman, too. When Son first met Altman, this is according to what Son has said publicly. he told Altman that, oh, you're going to go for artificial general intelligence. I believe you. I want to invest. We have reporting that SoftBank wanted to invest about$1 billion in OAI and Altman. But around that time, Altman was not actively seeking investors.

7:35So this deal did not happen. OpenAI was still a nonprofit at the time, and Altman wasn't yet the CEO. Son was focused on growing his new vision fund, which he started in 2017. He raised$100 billion and began investing in startups like WeWork, Uber, and DoorDash. But starting in 2019, several of those bets began running into trouble. Perhaps the most damaging bet was the one on co-working company WeWork. SoftBank invested billions of money into WeWork, but they had to scrap the IPO and all of the business kind of collapsed. SoftBank had to do a huge write-down on its investment in WeWork. At one point, they acknowledged they wrote down about$14 billion.

8:22Son said he made a mistake with investments in WeWork. He apologized for it at a 2023 annual shareholder meeting. People gave me advice, but I pushed back. It's all my responsibility. Adam, who was the founder of WeWork, really believed that he's building a business. Son publicly acknowledged that he had made a mistake with WeWork, and the company has said they should have done more vetting throughout the investment process of WeWork. By 2022, SoftBank had begun to recover from the losses and the dent in Son's reputation. Son was now ready to invest again, and OpenAI was back on his radar. By that time, Altman was already very popular.

9:11ChatGPT was very popular and it had enough investors backing the company. SoftBank was fielding inquiries from its own shareholders, like asking them, AI is a big thing for SoftBank. Why are you missing out on this company that seems to be most important? Son had to wait for the right moment to get involved. That opportunity came in 2024 when OpenAI began working on a project called Stargate to build data centers across the U.S. Stargate reportedly was a project that Altman was working together with Microsoft. But then apparently there was a time when the discussions weren't going well between Microsoft and OpenAI.

9:58and saw an opening. Sohn sensed relations cooling between OpenAI and Microsoft, and he pounced. In September 2024, SoftBank finally was able to invest$500 million into the company. Just a few months later, President Trump made a formal announcement launching the Stargate project. We're joined by Oracle Executive Chairman Larry Ellison, SoftBank CEO, my friend Masa, Masa Yoshisan, and CEO of OpenAI. And I would say the... So from that point on, things accelerated fast. In April that year, 2025, SoftBank announced it is committing$30 billion into OpenAI. And in February of this year, SoftBank announced a second$30 billion investment in OpenAI, bringing its total commitment to just over$60 billion.

10:53For SoftBank, it's the single largest bet on a single private company. Son has said multiple times that he sees OpenAI, ChatGPT, language model as the transformational technology that could reshape the whole world. And I think he genuinely believes that OpenAI is the company to bet on. For a long time, he's been looking for the next Alibaba because the Alibaba deal was such a defining deal that shaped Son's career as a venture capitalist. And the return on that bet was just huge. And that's what's kind of driving him to make such aggressive bets, especially with companies like OpenAI. And with him at 68 now, I think there's a part of him that feels that time is running out.

11:54But Son's commitment to open AI has raised some flags. Min Jong says some SoftBank insiders she's spoken with are growing anxious. The worry is that it becomes a point where Son is willing to kind of ignore potential risks in some ways. and brushes off voice of concerns from his close lieutenants about the potential risks of investing more money in OpenAI or expanding more aggressively into data center projects. After the break, with OpenAI burning cash, competition intensifying, and an IPO looming, what's at stake for Son and SoftBank investors?

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15:13In less than two years, Japan's SoftBank Group, led by CEO Masayoshi Son, has committed$60 billion in open AI. And by the end of this year, SoftBank is set to control a 13 % stake in the company. That kind of capital usually comes with operational influence. For example, when Sequoia Capital invested roughly$12 million into Google in 1999, they bought 10 % of the company and got a seat on the board. Here's Min Jong Lee. There are sources who would tell me that it's a very mutually strong relationship. And I think you can see it from different angles. But even though SoftBank is committed to investing more than$60 billion in OpenAI, they don't have a board seat or an observer right to OpenAI's board.

16:06SoftBank sources Bloomberg spoke to say this lack of control is concerning. I would say it is unusual, but it turns out that none of the top investors actually have a board seat on OpenAI's board. It's unclear whether Son pushed for a seat. Still, it's a structure and a predicament that SoftBank's people aren't used to. Something else they're not used to? The relationship between Son and Altman. What Son's lieutenants and close executives are used to is seeing when Son wants to speak to someone, he would be able to call on the founder he wants and they would be there to meet him. Whereas with Altman, the dynamic is a little bit different.

16:50The worry is that when SoftBank needs to step up about a certain concern they may have about OpenAI, it's not clear how much leverage they would have in getting that voice through to OpenAI and Sam Altman. In response to this story, SoftBank said it holds a high level of conviction in OpenAI and its leadership. The two companies have built a strong strategic partnership grounded in a shared view of where AI is headed and what it will require at global scale. In a separate statement, OpenAI said the companies have a great relationship and the two are among each other's closest collaborators. But Min Jong says it's an open secret that Son can sometimes take a gut-first approach to investing.

17:44Son has said himself that when he met Jack Ma of Alibaba, for example, he looked Jack Ma in the eye and thought, I like it, like he sees this animal spirit that he would like to support. So there is kind of that instinctive element to it. But I think, of course, internally within SoftBank, they would say that they have a proper vetting process. For OpenAI, you do have a roster of investors, big investors, who are kind of investing huge sums of money into OpenAI. But even with the top roster of outside investors, including the likes of Microsoft and Amazon, there's still concern among SoftBank insiders.

18:30And they have pushed back internally. On multiple occasions, there have been people inside SoftBank who would remind Son of these possibilities that, you know, maybe OpenAI might not turn out to be as successful as you would hope for. It sounds like SoftBank might be a company that's really dominated by Son's vision and Son himself. I think it was always a Son company in a way because he built the company from scratch and he's made all the key decisions. And there was a time in the past where SoftBank had some key members on the board like Fast Retailings, Yanai, and Nidex, Nagamori, who would actually speak up when they have a view that kind of goes against Son.

19:23But now these people have left the board and our understanding is that there is less outspoken voice to speak up against Sun in a very strong, forceful fashion. There are lieutenants who would raise concerns in a way, but in the end would ultimately fold when Sun has set his mind on something. Min Jong says these insider concerns are becoming more pressing now, partly because the AI landscape is shifting so quickly. Things could change so much overnight. And there's a lot of possibilities. There's a lot of risk factors that are impacting the dynamics because you don't know if the LLMs are the defining technology that will underline the new AI world, where we're talking about physical AI robots, humanoid robots, and all these new technologies that you see in sci-fi movies.

20:25Some investors have been asking whether SoftBank should hedge its bets by also backing OpenAI's rivals like Anthropic. But in an earnings call last week, the company's CFO said there are no plans to do that. Instead, SoftBank has doubled down with a massive loan package. They are leaning a lot into debt financing. And they recently inked a$40 billion deal, which I think is the single largest debt deal that SoftBank signed. And it's a one-year loan, which means they have to refinance it next year. And they do need OpenAI's valuation to maintain a certain level for the company to be able to be in a comfortable position to refinance the increasing amount of debt that it is tapping to finance OpenAI and an increasing number of other AI projects.

21:25Earlier this year, S &P Global Ratings lowered its outlook on SoftBank to negative from stable. The ratings agency said the massive bets on OpenAI could drain liquidity and erode the credit quality of SoftBank's assets. The credit market is definitely very sensitive to what SoftBank is doing, how much money it is trying to borrow. And CFO Goto repeatedly has said they are in a financially healthy state and in a position to refinance as needed. All three AI pioneers, OpenAI, Anthropic and XAI that's been acquired by SpaceX, are said to be planning IPOs. If all three list at the same time, the competition for capital would be intense.

22:13If the IPO is successful, if they do succeed in becoming a one trillion company, it would be a huge success for Saan and SoftBank at vindication of their aggressive bet. But that's a big if. If the IPO doesn't go well for OpenAI, SoftBank could find itself in trouble. And it could threaten the rollover of the loans that SoftBank has taken out this year. The landscape keeps changing so fast and there's a lot of financial uncertainty. So you don't know what the markets would look like a couple of months down. Later this year, next year, I was speaking to a VC source who did say, you know, you never know.

22:58OpenAI could be hugely successful and you could see a 3x return. But then at the same time, it could be zero. You know, it's that much unpredictable. And to be fair, that's what venture capital is. It's a high risk, high return dynamic that you embrace.

23:24This is The Big Take Asia from Bloomberg News. I'm Wan Ha. To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access to all of Bloomberg.com, subscribe today at Bloomberg.com slash podcast offer. If you liked the episode, make sure to subscribe and review The Big Take Asia wherever you listen to podcasts. It really helps people find the show. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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