SoftBank Credit Risk Rises As Firm Mulls $20 Billion Bond Sale For OpenAI Stake

SoftBank Group's 8.5% notes due 2036 fell as much as 2.5 cents to about 98 cents on the dollar after Bloomberg reported that Masayoshi Son's conglomerate is considering a $10 billion to $20 billion bond offering, prompting traders to price in additional leverage and supply risk as the investment firm plans to refinance the massive bridge loan backing its OpenAI investment.

Sources familiar with SoftBank's plans said the potential bond offering could be denominated in dollars and euros, though they stressed that its size and timing could change. Proceeds would be used partly to repay a $40 billion bridge loan secured earlier this year to fund SoftBank's OpenAI investment and partly to finance additional artificial intelligence investments.

Masayoshi Son's junk-rated conglomerate plans to invest more than $65 billion in OpenAI by October, funding one of the largest private AI bets in history partly with borrowed money.

"We are considering various options to refinance the bridge loan, but nothing has been decided, including the amount for each," a SoftBank spokesperson told the outlet. 

The report noted:

Unlike most of its international offerings, SoftBank is exploring a 144A format for the first time in more than a decade, which would allow the notes to be sold to institutional investors in the US, the people said. That would help the company tap a larger pool of capital and potentially boost demand for the sale, they added.

US hyperscalers are expected to pour trillions of dollars into data centers and other AI infrastructure over the coming years. These firms have already borrowed more than $410 billion so far this year, putting pressure on debt markets. There are also $3.1 trillion in hyperscaler off-balance-sheet commitments that have come into question, as we noted in our latest report here.