(Tomohiro Ohsumi/Contributor via Getty Images)
Japanese tech investment giant SoftBank is facing a tight deadline to secure $22.5 billion before the end of the year in order to honor its financial commitments to AI partner OpenAI, according to a new report from Reuters. The pressure is on SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son, who is weighing several options to assemble the massive funding package.
One of the primary levers available is borrowing against SoftBank’s stake in Arm Holdings, the British chip designer that went public last year and remains one of SoftBank’s most valuable assets. SoftBank is one of the key backers of OpenAI’s sweeping $500 billion Stargate data center initiative, which was unveiled nearly a year ago during a White House appearance alongside Oracle and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX.
The project aims to build enormous AI data centers packed with GPUs across the United States and abroad to support OpenAI’s next generation of models and accelerate progress toward Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI. From the moment Stargate was announced, skepticism followed.
Observers questioned whether OpenAI and its partners could realistically deliver on plans to invest as much as $500 billion, or even raise the initial $100 billion that was supposed to launch the effort. Not long after the announcement, Elon Musk publicly questioned whether any of the partners actually had the capital required to fulfill the project’s promises.
Since then, Oracle has moved aggressively, borrowing heavily to finance a large-scale infrastructure buildout on OpenAI’s behalf. SoftBank, by contrast, has taken a more complex path. The company previously liquidated its stake in Nvidia to help fund the venture, but a significant portion of its Stargate commitment was contingent on OpenAI transitioning into a for-profit entity.
That condition was met in October, clearing a major hurdle and shifting the spotlight back to SoftBank. With OpenAI’s restructuring complete, Son is now under pressure to deliver the promised capital. According to Reuters, SoftBank has multiple avenues to raise the $22.5 billion. One option is borrowing roughly $11.5 billion against its Arm Holdings stake. SoftBank also owns about four percent of T-Mobile, a holding valued at approximately $11 billion.
In addition, the company reported holding around $27 billion in cash as of the end of September, which could be tapped to meet its obligations. Still, pulling together such a large sum on a tight timeline underscores the financial strain involved in backing AI at this scale. Stargate has become a symbol of both the promise and the risk of the AI boom, requiring unprecedented capital commitments at a time when interest rates remain elevated and investors are increasingly cautious.
For SoftBank, the stakes are especially high. Son has long positioned the company as a visionary force in transformative technologies, but past bets have drawn criticism for excessive risk-taking. Delivering on Stargate would reinforce SoftBank’s role as a central power broker in the AI race. Failing to do so would add fuel to doubts about whether even the world’s largest tech investors can truly afford the future they are trying to build.
