SoftBank expands capital commitments to AI infrastructure and semiconductor assets

SoftBank Group has raised $11.1 billion in the largest high-yield corporate bond sale on record globally to fund its investments in OpenAI and other artificial intelligence-related companies and infrastructure.

Founder and Chief Executive Masayoshi Son is aiming to establish SoftBank as the world's leading AI platform with investments across the semiconductor supply chain, data centres, large language models, and robotics.

**OpenAI**

SoftBank first invested $500 million in ChatGPT's maker in 2024 but soon increased its stake, deploying around $30 billion more in 2025 and committing to a further $30 billion in 2026, with the final tranche due to close within days. The investments will bring SoftBank's holding to around 13% of OpenAI's equity. In 2025, Son said he was "all in" on the firm.

As of the end of June, OpenAI's rising valuation in private fundraising rounds had generated $45 billion in unrealised gains for SoftBank, though the company has delayed plans for a public listing, deferring SoftBank's prospects of realising those gains and taking the investment to public markets.

**DigitalBridge**

SoftBank agreed in December 2025 to acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge in a deal valued at $4 billion. The firm invests in digital infrastructure sectors including data centres, cell towers, fibre networks, small-cell systems and edge infrastructure, and is among the investors in the Stargate data centre development scheme.

**ABB's Robotics Business**

In October 2025, SoftBank agreed to acquire the robotics business of Swiss engineering group ABB in a $5.4 billion deal. Son has touted robotics as a long-term growth prospect and earlier this year hired banks to explore the spinoff of SoftBank's autonomous robotics holdings, which it calls Roze.

**Intel**

On August 18, SoftBank unveiled a $2 billion equity investment in Intel, stating that the deal reflected its belief that chip manufacturing and supply would expand further in the US and that the American company would play a critical role.

The holding generated a valuation gain of 1.33 trillion yen ($8.39 billion) as Intel's shares surged in the three months ended June 2026.

**Stargate**

Stargate is a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle. US President Donald Trump unveiled the project in January 2025, announcing that the companies would invest up to $500 billion over four years.

In August 2025, SoftBank Chief Financial Officer Yoshimitsu Goto said the project, for which SoftBank is leading financing, had been delayed by longer-than-expected negotiations with other parties and decisions on sites.

As part of the initiative, SoftBank and OpenAI each invested $500 million in January in SB Energy, SoftBank's data centre development subsidiary, which is set to build and operate a 1.2-gigawatt OpenAI data centre in Texas.

**Perplexity AI**

The 4-year-old startup operates an AI-powered search engine and has backing from investors including Nvidia and SoftBank. A report in The Information in August said Nvidia was planning a further funding round at a valuation exceeding $30 billion.

**Ampere Computing**

SoftBank announced a $6.5 billion deal in March to acquire Ampere Computing, a US chip designer founded by the former president of Intel.

Ampere manufactures data centre central processing unit chips based on computing architecture from SoftBank's majority-owned Arm Holdings. These chips are used by firms like Oracle in their cloud computing infrastructure.

**Graphcore**

In 2024, SoftBank acquired the British AI chipmaker for an undisclosed sum.

Once positioned as a rival to Nvidia, Graphcore had struggled to secure the investment needed to compete.

**Arm Holdings**

The British chip designer owned by SoftBank went public in 2023, achieving a valuation of $54.5 billion.

SoftBank retains the majority of the company, and its stake has surged in value along with the wider boom across the semiconductor supply chain, worth 36.8 trillion yen ($232.41 billion) as of August 2026.

Arm-based devices power nearly every smartphone in the world, and server chips based on its intellectual property have made significant inroads in the data centre market.

In March, Arm unveiled a new AI data centre chip, marking a strategic shift—until then, the company had relied solely on intellectual property for revenue, licensing its designs to chipmakers and receiving royalty payments on chips sold.

**Nvidia**

SoftBank owned around 5% of Nvidia until it sold its stake in 2019, before ChatGPT generated a surge in AI interest at the end of 2022.

The company subsequently rebuilt a position but ultimately sold its $5.83 billion stake in the second half of 2025.