SoftBank Group Corp. has reopened negotiations with a group of lenders to secure a $10 billion margin loan backed by its stake in OpenAI, offering a corporate guarantee to break the stillness over how to value the privately-held artificial intelligence startup.
According to Reuters, they resumed discussions after earlier attempts to secure the massive line of credit stalled because financial institutions balked at the difficulty of assessing and liquidating private company equity.
Unlike publicly traded stocks, which have transparent market pricing, unlisted shares are harder to value and more difficult to sell if a borrower defaults.
To make lenders more comfortable with the arrangement, the Tokyo-based technology investor introduced a key structural concession.
Under the updated framework, SoftBank is offering to guarantee the repayment of the loan. This shift gives underwriting banks direct recourse to SoftBank itself, meaning the corporation would be legally obligated to make the lenders whole, if the promised OpenAI shares lose value.
READ: SoftBank faces setback in bid for OpenAI-backed financing (June 10, 2026)
Initially, SoftBank sought a structure where the loan was backed solely by its holdings in the ChatGPT-maker.
Under that original setup, banks pushed back because they would have had no legal claim on SoftBank’s broader corporate assets beyond the equity itself if the collateral collapsed.
The banking syndicate expected to participate in the financing includes Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Mizuho Financial Group.
Representatives for the three financial institutions, SoftBank and OpenAI did not declined to comment and did not immediately respond to inquiries regarding the private negotiations.
The financing push is a central element of SoftBank’s ambitious strategy to fund its expanding artificial intelligence investments under billionaire founder Masayoshi Son.
However, borrowing against private tech valuations has proven complex. SoftBank originally tried to raise at least $10 billion through the margin loan before scaling its target down to roughly $6 billion following hesitation from Wall Street lenders, a process that ultimately halted before these current talks resumed.
READ: Nvidia, Amazon, SoftBank invest in OpenAI’s $110 billion funding round (February 27, 2026)
The ongoing negotiations come at a critical time for the conglomerate’s balance sheet. SoftBank currently faces a March 2027 deadline to repay a separate $40 billion bridge loan that helped finance its core investment in OpenAI.
Executives have previously stated that the multi-billion-dollar bridge facility will likely be settled using existing corporate assets and alternative financing measures.
A potential exit path for lenders could eventually emerge from the public equity markets. OpenAI confidentially filed for an initial public offering in the United States in June.
A successful public debut would transition the startup into a publicly traded entity, establishing an easily verifiable market price and making SoftBank’s collateral significantly easier for lenders to evaluate and liquidate if necessary.