From Japan Times, December 20:
SoftBank Group is racing to close a $22.5 billion funding commitment to OpenAI by year-end through an array of cash-raising plans, including a sale of some investments, and could tap its undrawn margin loans borrowed against its valuable ownership in chip firm Arm Holdings, sources said.
The "all-in" bet on OpenAI is among the biggest yet by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, as the Japanese billionaire seeks to improve his firm's position in the race for artificial intelligence. To come up with the money, Son has already sold SoftBank's entire $5.8 billion stake in AI chip leader Nvidia, offloaded $4.8 billion of its T-Mobile U.S. stake and slashed staff.
Son has slowed most other dealmaking at SoftBank's Vision Fund to a crawl, and any deal above $50 million now requires his explicit approval, two of the sources said. Son's firm is working to take public its payments app operator, PayPay.
The initial public offering, originally expected this month, was pushed back due to the 43-daylong U.S. government shutdown, which ended in November. PayPay's market debut, likely to raise more than $20 billion, is now expected in the first quarter of next year, according to one direct source and another person familiar with the efforts.
The Japanese conglomerate is also looking to cash out some of its holdings in Didi Global, the operator of China’s dominant ride-hailing platform, which is looking to list its shares in Hong Kong after a regulatory crackdown forced it to delist in the U.S. in 2021, a source with direct knowledge said. Investment managers at SoftBank's Vision Fund are being directed toward the OpenAI deal, two of the above sources said.
SoftBank's scramble to marshal funds offers a window into the strain faced even by the world's biggest dealmakers as they scramble to finance ambitious AI data center projects worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
SoftBank declined to comment.
OpenAI has not yet received the remaining funding, but expects the money to come in by the end of 2025, as stipulated in the contract, sources said.
SoftBank has multiple sources of capital it could tap, including margin loans, cash on its balance sheet, stakes in listed companies, and corporate bonds or bridge loans, sources said....
....MUCH MORE
As noted when Mr. Son dumped Nvidia:
That was a rookie fund manager's move, using your most liquid asset to fund your least liquid.
In the olden days proprietary traders/stock jobbers/proto-market makers would keep their share and bond certificates in a box—hence short against the box etc. And in that box the most speculative, least-liquid-in-a-crash certificates were on top ready to be tossed into the maw of a descending market, with the highest quality, most liquid shares at the bottom of the box.
It was a tell as to either the individual trader's finances or to the depth of a downturn to see certs from the bottom of the box coming onto the market.
As a side note, you can still get your stock in certificate form but it will cost you at least $500 per cert. The powers that be, Depository Trust, the brokers et al. really prefer you don't ask for the paper.....
Here's six months of SoftBank stock price action via TradingView:
