SoftBank said Thursday it has executed the third and final $10 billion tranche of its $30 billion follow-on investment in OpenAI, completing one of the largest single commitments in private-market history and closing out the Japanese group's pledge to the ChatGPT developer's record-setting funding round.
The payment was made through SoftBank's Vision Fund 2, the company said, and was funded largely with proceeds from its recent $11.15 billion sale of foreign-currency-denominated bonds — a high-yield offering with coupons of up to 9.75 percent that drew attention for the sheer scale of debt deployed to bankroll an AI bet. Reuters first reported the completion. For more context on this story, see our ongoing more AI stories.
A Three-Tranche Marathon Comes to an End
SoftBank structured the follow-on commitment in three equal $10 billion installments. The second tranche was executed on July 1, 2026, and the final installment landed Thursday, finishing an unusually public funding schedule for a private-market deal. With the last payment, SoftBank's cumulative investment in OpenAI rises to roughly $64.6 billion for a stake of about 13 percent, according to figures cited in market reports, making the Japanese group one of OpenAI's largest shareholders.
The arc has been expensive. To fund the final installment, SoftBank tapped bond markets in September with an $11.15 billion offering rated below investment grade, with yields reaching 9.75 percent on the longest-dated paper. The notes were issued in both dollar- and euro-denominated tranches, with proceeds earmarked primarily for the OpenAI payment and the remainder held for general corporate purposes. Analysts flagged the deal as evidence of how far the world's most aggressive AI backers are now willing to stretch their balance sheets — and how expensive the money behind the AI boom has become.
The tranche structure itself was unusual. Private follow-ons of this size are typically negotiated and closed quietly; SoftBank, by contrast, laid out a public payment calendar and executed against it in plain view, with each $10 billion installment landing roughly a quarter apart. The final payment's arrival on schedule will reassure investors who questioned whether the group could actually fund its pledge — a doubt SoftBank moved to settle by raising the bond financing before the deadline rather than after it.
Nvidia Crossed the Finish Line, Too
SoftBank was not the only backer closing out its pledge this week. According to The Information, Nvidia also made the final $10 billion payment on its own $30 billion commitment, meaning the two companies together injected the last $20 billion of a combined $60 billion pledge. Amazon earlier completed its $50 billion investment in OpenAI, rounding out a cast of mega-cap backers whose commitments have few precedents among private companies.
The composition of the round is as notable as its size. Rather than a broad syndicate of sovereign wealth funds and crossover investors, OpenAI's latest capital came overwhelmingly from companies with direct commercial stakes in its success: a chipmaker whose accelerators train its models, a cloud and retail giant that distributes them, and a Japanese conglomerate whose founder has framed the investment as the core of his legacy. That alignment — and its conflicts — will shape how the round's capital is deployed.
For OpenAI, the completed round converts promised capital into cash on hand at a moment when spending on compute — GPUs, data-center leases, and long-term energy contracts — dominates frontier-lab budgets. For SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son, it marks the full deployment of the bet he has staked much of the group's post-Vision Fund reputation on: that OpenAI emerges from the frontier race as its decisive winner.
A Leveraged Bet Under a Harsh Light
The completion arrives amid rising skepticism about debt-financed AI investment. SoftBank's bonds sold at BB+ — a notch below investment grade — with the proceeds earmarked primarily for the OpenAI installment, and market commentators have been quick to note the circularity of an ecosystem in which chipmakers invest in the labs that buy their chips, funded by bond markets betting on both. Wall Street gave that thesis a reality check this week, with Reuters reporting growing doubts about the strategy of financing AI buildouts on vendor balance sheets.
SoftBank has largely brushed off such concerns. The company's public position is that its OpenAI stake is a generational opportunity comparable to early bets on internet infrastructure, and that the tranche structure lets it manage cash flow while keeping its commitment intact. Thursday's final payment makes that commitment irreversible.
The accounting will now draw scrutiny. A stake of this size, held through Vision Fund 2 and carried at private valuations, gives SoftBank's earnings a direct link to OpenAI's next funding event or listing — and to the markdowns that would follow any pause in the AI spending cycle. Investors got a reminder of that sensitivity this week, as renewed debate over circular AI financing weighed on the very chip and infrastructure names that have powered the sector's rally.
What Comes Next
With the follow-on complete, attention shifts to what OpenAI does with the capital and how SoftBank realizes a return. An eventual OpenAI IPO remains the most discussed exit route, and a listing would give SoftBank a public mark for a position it currently carries privately. Until then, the group's fortunes are tied to a company spending at a pace that has unsettled even bullish investors — with SoftBank now $64.6 billion deep in the outcome.
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