A Japanese conglomerate run by Masayoshi Son. SoftBank owns 87% of Arm, the chip-design firm, which it bought for $31bn in 2016 and which is now worth $250bn (the remainder is listed on the Nasdaq). Son has been assembling a chip portfolio, buying Ampere (a maker of server processors) and Graphcore (which designs AI chips), and acquiring 2% of Intel for $2bn. He is said to be keen to build an AI champion to rival Nvidia. SoftBank has also announced big data-centre investments.
SoftBank is OpenAI's second-largest external shareholder after Microsoft. By October 2026 it will have invested $65bn in the maker of ChatGPT. It has committed to spend $3bn annually on OpenAI's products, contributing perhaps 10% of the AI lab's revenue. In 2026 SoftBank also agreed to pay $5bn for the robotics arm of ABB, a Swiss engineering firm, and $4bn for DigitalBridge, a data-centre business. It sold the last of its Nvidia stock in October 2025. Notoriously, SoftBank was the largest investor in WeWork, whose value was inflated during the era of easy money.
The cost to insure against a default on SoftBank's debts has soared. Cashflows from its operating businesses are insufficient to service its obligations. Its $40bn bridge loan, taken out to invest in OpenAI, matures in March 2027. Selling bonds to Japanese retail investors costs more than it used to. SoftBank says its level of debt is copacetic, but its "loan-to-value" figure ignores an additional $28bn borrowed against stock SoftBank owns in Arm and its Japanese telecoms operation; it is seeking a further $10bn to be borrowed against its stake in OpenAI. Holdings in T-Mobile, Grab and DiDi are worth much less than they were even a year ago.
Whistler's Law: You never know who is right, but you always know who is in charge.