SoftBank pays 9.75 per cent to borrow as the OpenAI bill comes due

By Strota Newsroom · 2026-09-24 · How Strota reports

SoftBank Group priced 11.1 billion dollars of bonds on 24 September 2026, and the terms say more about the company's position than the size of the raise does. The dollar notes pay between 8.625 per cent and 9.75 per cent a year, the highest yields SoftBank has ever paid on dollar debt.

The structure is three dollar tranches and two euro tranches. The smallest is 1,000 million dollars maturing in 3.5 years at 8.625 per cent. Then two 4,500 million dollar tranches: one at 5.5 years paying 9.250 per cent, one at 7.5 years paying 9.750 per cent. On the euro side there are two tranches of 500 million euros each, a 4-year note at 7.125 per cent and a 6-year note at 8.000 per cent. Interest is paid twice a year, and the notes are expected to settle on 29 September 2026.

The purpose is narrow and dated. The money funds the third and final 10 billion dollar tranche of the 30 billion dollar follow-on investment in OpenAI that SoftBank agreed in February 2026, and that payment is expected to close on 1 October 2026. Alongside the sale, SoftBank expects to cancel the remaining 10 billion dollars of undrawn capacity under the 40 billion dollar bridge facility it signed in March 2026. The bond issue replaces a bridge loan with permanent debt.

The scale of the commitment is what makes the borrowing cost matter. SoftBank has now committed 64.6 billion dollars to OpenAI and will own roughly 13 per cent of the company once the deal completes. The payment due on 1 October is the last slice of it.

As a piece of capital markets history, the sale is the largest high-yield corporate bond issue on record. It surpasses the 10.9 billion dollars that Numericable Group raised in 2014, according to LSEG data. High yield is the market's label for debt from issuers whose credit is not investment grade, and it is the reason the coupons look the way they do.

Demand was strong enough to move the price. Orders for the dollar notes exceeded 30 billion dollars, which let SoftBank cut yields from the initial ranges it had been marketing. SoftBank shares rose more than 7 per cent on Thursday as Japanese markets opened for the first time that week after a three-day holiday.

Cheap money this was not. The dollar tranche yields are the highest SoftBank has ever paid, and the longest tranche asks the company to pay 9.750 per cent for 7.5 years. A borrower pays that spread because lenders are pricing the possibility that the money does not come back on schedule, and because the notes are unsecured, meaning they are backed by SoftBank's general credit rather than by any specific asset.

This is not a one-off trip to the market. SoftBank has issued 14.6 billion dollars in high-yield bonds so far in 2026, which is 63.4 per cent of the entire Asia Pacific and Japan high-yield corporate bond market. It also raised 1 trillion yen, about 6.3 billion dollars, from retail investors this month.

The credit market's own gauge is less enthusiastic than the equity market. The cost of insuring against a SoftBank failure to pay over the next five years rose this month to its highest level since April 2025, which is when the company disclosed the 30 billion dollar OpenAI investment. Equity holders bought the AI story on Thursday; the insurance market marked the balance sheet.

For a reader outside finance, the mechanism is worth separating from the drama. A bond is a loan the lender can trade. SoftBank sold 10 billion dollars of such loans in dollars and 1 billion dollars in euros, in the markets of the United States, Europe and Asia excluding Japan, under rules that restrict the sale to qualified institutional buyers. In exchange, buyers receive a fixed coupon twice a year and their principal back at maturity, provided SoftBank pays.

The company is not only borrowing. It has sold assets and taken out loans backed by its holdings in chip designer Arm and in OpenAI itself. Bond issuance is one lever among several, and the mix is what determines how exposed the group becomes to a change in sentiment toward AI.

That exposure is the honest question the bond sale raises, and it is not answered by the bond sale. The documents establish the amounts, the coupons, the maturities, the use of proceeds and the retirement of the bridge facility. They do not establish that the OpenAI investment will earn a return above 9.750 per cent, and nothing in the filings claims it will.

What the terms do establish is the price the market set for that risk on 24 September 2026. SoftBank needed 11.1 billion dollars to make a payment falling due a week later, it found the demand, and it agreed to its highest-ever dollar coupon to get it. The record size of the sale and the record cost of the debt are the same fact.

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