SoftBank Group has trimmed the planned size of a margin loan using its OpenAI holdings as collateral, with discussions now centering on a potential facility as small as $6 billion compared with an earlier $10 billion target, people familiar with the talks told Bloomberg.
Bankers working on the transaction and representatives of SoftBank have been presenting the lower figure to prospective lenders in recent conversations, the people said. They also cautioned that the final amount of any completed financing remains unsettled and could change as talks progress.
One key source of the pullback is lender hesitation tied to the difficulty of valuing OpenAI, which is still a private company. That uncertainty has weighed on some creditors' appetite for a loan secured by the stake, according to the reporting. The groups pitched as potential providers of capital have included private credit managers, traditional banks and hedge funds.
Discussions around the financing reportedly began in mid-March and have continued since, the people said. The proposed structure would form part of SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son's wider strategy to place the conglomerate at the center of the global artificial intelligence buildout.
Separately, reports indicate SoftBank has held talks with Nvidia and Foxconn about potential collaboration to build AI servers in Japan. According to the Nikkei, SoftBank's telecommunications arm intends to start by assembling externally sourced parts before moving toward full in-house manufacturing of the servers over time. The machines would be configured to operate advanced graphics processing units at high performance levels.
The Nikkei report adds that the server initiative is expected to be incorporated into SoftBank's medium-term management plan, which could be announced as soon as Monday. The company has not finalized details of the financing or the production program, and conditions remain subject to change.
Other reporting cited in recent weeks noted that OpenAI has faced revenue and growth challenges. The Wall Street Journal said the ChatGPT maker missed several monthly sales targets after competition from Anthropic in certain segments, and that OpenAI fell short of an internal goal to reach one billion weekly active ChatGPT users by the end of last year. Those developments are part of the context surrounding lender caution on valuing the private company.
As conversations continue, both the size of any margin loan and the timeline for SoftBank's server plans remain open-ended. Market participants and potential lenders are weighing the valuation risks inherent in backing a loan with a stake in a non-public AI company.