SoftBank raised $11.1 billion through the world's largest high-yield corporate bond issuance on record, which will be used to invest in OpenAI and other AI-related companies and infrastructure.
SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son is seeking to build SoftBank into a leading global AI platform, with investments spanning multiple sectors including the semiconductor supply chain, data centers, large language model development, and robotics. Below are SoftBank's major AI-related investments announced to date:
1. OpenAI: SoftBank initially invested $500 million in OpenAI in 2024, followed by approximately $30 billion in 2025, and committed to another $30 billion in 2026. Upon completion of these investments, SoftBank will hold approximately a 13% stake. As of the end of June, OpenAI's valuation increase has generated approximately $45 billion in unrealized gains for SoftBank.
2. DigitalBridge: In December 2025, SoftBank announced it would acquire digital infrastructure investment company DigitalBridge in a deal valued at approximately $4 billion. DigitalBridge primarily invests in digital infrastructure such as data centers, communication towers, fiber optic networks, small cell systems, and edge infrastructure. It is also an investor in the "Stargate" data center construction project.
3. ABB Robotics Business
In October 2025, SoftBank agreed to acquire the robotics business of Swiss engineering group ABB for $5.4 billion. Masayoshi Son has consistently viewed robotics as a long-term growth area. Earlier this year, SoftBank reportedly advanced its Roze project, aiming to integrate AI robotics and data center businesses, and seek a US IPO as early as this year, targeting a valuation of $100 billion.
3. Intel
On August 18, SoftBank announced a $2 billion equity investment in Intel. With Intel's stock price surging in the three months ending June this year, SoftBank's related assets generated a valuation gain of 1.33 trillion yen (approximately $8.39 billion).
4. Stargate
Stargate is a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle. In August 2025, SoftBank's CFO stated that the project was delayed due to slow progress in financing negotiations and data center site selection. Trump announced the project in January 2025, stating that related companies would invest up to $500 billion over the next four years. As part of this plan, in January of this year, SoftBank and OpenAI each invested $500 million in SoftBank's data center development subsidiary, SB Energy. SB Energy plans to build and operate a 1.2 gigawatt OpenAI data center in Texas.
5. Perplexity AI: Perplexity AI, a four-year-old AI search engine startup, has secured investor support including Nvidia and SoftBank. Nvidia is reportedly planning to participate in its new round of financing, potentially valuing the company at over $30 billion.
6. Ampere Computing: In March of this year, SoftBank announced its acquisition of US chip design startup Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion. Founded by a former Intel president, the company primarily produces data center CPUs using computing architecture provided by Arm, a SoftBank-owned company. Its chips have been used in cloud computing infrastructure by companies such as Oracle.
7. Graphcore: In 2024, SoftBank acquired British AI chip manufacturer Graphcore; the transaction amount was not disclosed. Graphcore was once considered a potential competitor to Nvidia, but it has struggled to secure sufficient funding to compete with Nvidia.
8. Arm: SoftBank still holds a majority stake in Arm. With the overall boom in the global semiconductor supply chain, the value of SoftBank's Arm stake has increased significantly. As of August 2026, its holdings were valued at 36.8 trillion yen (approximately US$232.41 billion).
9. Nvidia: SoftBank previously held approximately 5% of Nvidia's shares but sold them all in 2019. At that time, it was still several years before ChatGPT was launched in late 2022 and ignited the AI investment boom. SoftBank subsequently re-established its stake but sold $5.83 billion worth of Nvidia shares in the second half of 2025.
