SoftBank Group is preparing to sell more than $11 billion of high-yield bonds, in what would stand as one of the largest junk bond offerings in recent memory. Nearly all of the proceeds are earmarked for the Japanese conglomerate's mounting financial commitments to OpenAI, the artificial intelligence lab behind ChatGPT.

Offerings of that scale are rare in the high-yield market, where individual deals typically come in at a fraction of the size, and the transaction links the credit market directly to the financing of SoftBank's OpenAI commitments.

The deal is structured as $10 billion of US dollar-denominated bonds spread across three maturities, plus €1 billion of euro-den notes across two maturities. The issuance is expected to price around September 24, 2026, with Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley running the books. As bookrunners, those banks will manage the deal's marketing, gauge investor demand, and help set final pricing terms.

What SoftBank Is Actually Buying

SoftBank's total commitment to OpenAI is approaching $65 billion, made in exchange for a targeted 13% stake in the company. That math implies a pre-money valuation of $730 billion for OpenAI—a figure that would make it one of the most valuable private companies ever to exist.

The bond sale is part of a broader financing push that has seen the company raise approximately $37 billion year-to-date through a combination of loans and bond sales. Just days before the offering, on September 15, 2026, SoftBank repaid $25.9 billion of a $40 billion bridge loan it had taken out to fund the OpenAI position. Bridge loans are short-term borrowings intended to be replaced by permanent financing once longer-dated arrangements are in place, which explains the sequencing of the repayment days ahead of the bond pricing. The company also recently closed an $11.87 billion loan from roughly 20 banks, providing additional runway as it continues to build out its AI portfolio.

The Credit Picture

SoftBank carries a BB+ credit rating, placing it one notch below investment grade—the technical definition of junk—though the company sits essentially at the threshold of respectability in bond market terms. Issuers in the high-yield tier pay investors a yield premium to compensate for that added risk, and many institutional funds are restricted to investment-grade paper—a line SoftBank currently sits just beneath.

Investor outreach took place in New York ahead of the deal, and the roster of underwriting banks signals that Wall Street's biggest names are comfortable putting their names on the transaction.

Masayoshi Son's AI Conviction, in Dollar Terms

SoftBank chairman Masayoshi Son has been public about his belief that artificial general intelligence represents the most important technological shift of his lifetime. The $37 billion raised through bonds and loans this year alone rivals the entire venture capital budgets of most large institutional investors.

SoftBank's Vision Fund era left the company badly exposed when tech valuations collapsed in 2022. The company has since restructured parts of its balance sheet, and the bond deal reflects a more deliberate approach to liability management than the improvised financing that characterized some earlier investments. With pricing expected around September 24, the level of demand and the yield premium investors require will show how readily credit markets absorb AI-linked risk at this scale.