"Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank needs to secure $22.5 billion before the end of the year to make good on its commitments to AI partner OpenAI. According to Reuters, there are several levers SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son could pull in order to put the funding package together, including calling on untapped margin loans tied to its stake in British chip design firm Arm Holdings."
"SoftBank is one of OpenAI's principal financiers in its $500 billion Stargate datacenter initiative announced during a White House appearance nearly a year ago alongside Oracle and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX. The ambitious infrastructure development aims to dot the US and other nations with enough GPU bit barns to fuel the development of OpenAI's next-gen models and further the advancement of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), AI superintelligence, or whatever Altman is calling it these days."
"Whether OpenAI and its partners could actually deliver on plans to invest up to $500 billion, or even line up the initial $100 billion they said would kick off the project, has been a point of contention over the past year. Not long after the initiative was announced, former OpenAI co-founder and xAI CEO Elon Musk questioned whether any of them actually had the money required to make good on Stargate's claims."
SoftBank must secure $22.5 billion before the end of the year to satisfy commitments to OpenAI. Several funding options include tapping untapped margin loans against its Arm Holdings stake and selling or leveraging its four percent T-Mobile stake valued around $11 billion. SoftBank previously liquidated its Nvidia stake to fund the venture. SoftBank is a principal financier in OpenAI's $500 billion Stargate datacenter program aimed at deploying GPU facilities worldwide. Some partners like Oracle have already borrowed heavily to build infrastructure. Skepticism has arisen about whether partners can fulfill the project's multibillion-dollar funding pledges.
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