Business News Tech AI SoftBank junk bond sale raises stakes for CEO Son's all-in AI bet
SoftBank junk bond sale raises stakes for CEO Son's all-in AI bet
SoftBank's promise to pay its highest-ever yields in a record $11 billion junk-bond offering highlights the pressure on CEO Masayoshi Son to secure returns on his all-in bet on AI amid concerns about possible overheating in the market.
SoftBank's promise to pay its highest-ever yields in a record $11 billion junk-bond offering highlights the pressure on CEO Masayoshi Son to secure returns on his all-in bet on AI amid concerns about possible overheating in the market. The SoftBank debt issuance last month added to a sharp surge in corporate borrowing this year, including major bond sales from Amazon.com, Alphabet and Tencent. The scale of Son's investments, which include backing totalling $64.6 billion for ChatGPT maker OpenAI, in particular, has made the technology-and-investing conglomerate a bellwether for AI sentiment.
Those fresh investments are now coming under sharper scrutiny by analysts and investors amid worries about the degree of concentration in SoftBank's portfolio and whether a payoff from the expenditures by AI companies will come soon enough. 75% in order to retain assets that it believes will appreciate, a senior SoftBank executive told Reuters. "We've borrowed money in large part because we don't want to sell assets that we believe will keep rising in value," said Alex Clavel, CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisers, which manages the Vision Funds. Sam Altman's OpenAI is the core investment in the latest iteration of Son's investment strategy, following lucrative bets on Chinese tech giant Alibaba and chip designer Arm.
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