$40 Billion “Unsecured 1-Year Loan” to SoftBank! JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs Are “Confident” OpenAI Will IPO This Year?

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SoftBank spends $40 billion on bridge loans to bet on OpenAI; the loan structure itself may reveal Wall Street’s judgment of the AI giant’s IPO timeline.

SoftBank Group announced Friday that it has secured a $40 billion bridge loan to support its investment commitment in OpenAI and for general corporate purposes. The loan was jointly arranged by JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho Bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, and Mitsubishi UFJ Bank.

The most notable aspect of this loan is its structure: unsecured, with a term of only 12 months, and requiring repayment or refinancing by March 2027. This arrangement suggests that the banks involved may generally expect OpenAI to go public within a year, at which time SoftBank would have sufficient liquidity to repay the debt.

"One-year unsecured" structure: Is Wall Street betting on OpenAI going public this year?

The loan’s term design is the focus of the market’s attention. This $40 billion loan is unsecured and has only a twelve-month repayment window, which means SoftBank must complete repayment or secure refinancing before next year.

According to CNBC and other media reports, OpenAI is expected to advance its IPO plans this year. If these expectations come true, this listing will be among the largest IPOs in history, providing SoftBank with substantial liquidity to repay the above loan.

The participation of leading investment banks such as JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs in arranging this short-term unsecured loan is being interpreted by the market as these institutions having high confidence in OpenAI’s IPO timeline.

SoftBank’s bet on OpenAI exceeds $60 billion

This loan directly serves SoftBank’s previously made investment commitment. Last month, OpenAI completed a record-breaking $110 billion financing, and SoftBank’s Vision Fund II committed $30 billion in investment. Combined with its previous investments, SoftBank’s total bet on OpenAI has exceeded $60 billion.

SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has continuously increased his investment in the AI sector in recent years. Previously, SoftBank and OpenAI jointly launched the “Stargate Project,” aiming to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the United States.

In December 2024, Masayoshi Son and then-President-elect Trump jointly announced that SoftBank plans to invest $100 billion in the U.S. AI and related infrastructure sector over the next four years.

A new phase in SoftBank’s AI strategy

This loan is a microcosm of SoftBank’s continuous acceleration in the AI sector. Over the past several years, SoftBank’s Vision Fund has experienced ups and downs, recording huge losses on several investments, but Masayoshi Son did not pull back and instead chose to make even bigger bets on the new wave of technology represented by generative AI.

OpenAI, thanks to the widespread popularity of ChatGPT, has become the core player in the global generative AI field, with Microsoft as one of its shareholders.

As competition among tech giants in the AI field heats up, SoftBank, through this financing, further strengthens its strategic partnership with OpenAI, while also binding its rise and fall more closely with the prospects of this leading AI company.

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