Mr. Son got the money.
From Financial News London, August 6:
Loan deepens tech investor’s entanglement with the ChatGPT maker
Global tech investor SoftBank Group used its stake in OpenAI to borrow $10 billion from a group of banks, the company said Thursday, dialing up risk on its giant bet on the AI pioneer.
The cash, in turn, helps SoftBank fund an even larger stake in OpenAI: SoftBank is poised to pay another $10 billion for shares in the ChatGPT maker by October, the final chunk of a $30 billion investment announced earlier this year.
The loan, announced alongside SoftBank’s second-quarter earnings, comes as the Japanese group embarks on a wave of hefty new AI spending commitments.
SoftBank, led by billionaire Chief Executive Masayoshi Son, has vowed to become a leading builder of AI data centers and a major investor in AI-powered robotics. It is also setting up its own neocloud—a business that rents AI computing power to major tech companies and startups—similar to CoreWeave.
Many of those broader AI investments rely on OpenAI.
The $10 billion loan is backed by some of the biggest names on Wall Street and in Tokyo. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Apollo, Mizuho Securities and Sumitomo Mitsui all participated.
Thursday’s deal is an unusual move, as backers of OpenAI and other large startups typically don’t invest using debt.
While Wall Street banks routinely offer so-called margin loans to investors in publicly traded companies, they are reluctant to make large loans backed by stock in private, loss-making companies given the risks inherent to startups....
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