The value soared by 240 billion. Masayoshi Son is frantically betting on OpenAI and making huge profits.

All the losses incurred in the sharing economy era will be recouped in the AI era.

On May 21st, the stock price of SoftBank Group soared nearly 20%, with its market value increasing by 5.7 trillion yen in a single day, equivalent to approximately 243.6 billion yuan, and the total market value soaring to 34.5 trillion yen.

Behind the sharp rise in the stock price is SoftBank Group's substantial bet on the AI track.

According to media reports, OpenAI plans to secretly submit an IPO application in the United States in the coming weeks and is expected to go public this autumn. It is reported that SoftBank Group has cumulatively invested more than $60 billion in OpenAI and holds approximately 13% of its shares.

Relevant industry insiders said that, considering the current development status of the AI industry, it is crucial for leading companies to be the first to enter the capital market to enhance their valuation.

Referring to the listing valuation logic of Zhipu and Minimax, if OpenAI is the first to complete its listing, its market value is likely to exceed the trillion - yuan mark.

Financial report data shows that as of 2025, SoftBank's cumulative investment cost in OpenAI was $34.6 billion, and the corresponding fair value of the assets reached $79.6 billion, meaning that the floating profit of this core investment is approximately $45 billion.

In the layout of heavily investing in AI, Masayoshi Son still continues his radical and decisive investment style.

In February this year, SoftBank Group finalized the final agreement for a subsequent investment of $30 billion through its second Vision Fund. Before this round of investment, OpenAI's valuation reached $730 billion. Among them, $10 billion of the investment will be made in three installments, arriving in April, July, and October 2026 respectively. SoftBank confirmed that the investment in April has been fully executed.

Based on this calculation, SoftBank's total investment in OpenAI has increased to $64.6 billion.

According to SoftBank's 2025 financial report, in the twelve months ending March 31st of that year, the Vision Fund division under SoftBank Group achieved an investment income of approximately $46 billion, and almost all of this income came from the soaring valuation of its shares in OpenAI.

In fact, an investment scale of $64.6 billion is by no means a small amount for SoftBank.

So, where exactly did SoftBank raise this huge amount of funds?

It is reported that $20 billion of the funds came from the financing obtained by SoftBank through mortgaging its Arm shares. In addition, SoftBank also pledged the shares of its Japanese telecommunications subsidiary, SBKK, to raise approximately $7.7 billion. On March 27th this year, SoftBank signed an unprecedented $40 - billion bridge loan, initially led by five institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho, Sumitomo Mitsui, and Mitsubishi UFJ, and the leading institutions were later expanded to eight. This is also one of the largest bridge loans in Asian history.

Public information shows that $30 billion of this loan will be directly used to follow - invest in OpenAI, and the loan term is 12 months. This also means that SoftBank will have a repayment scale of more than $40 billion when the loan matures in March 2027.

As early as October 2025, Masayoshi Son liquidated all his NVIDIA shares and cashed out $5.8 billion. In a public speech in December of that year, Masayoshi Son admitted, "I didn't want to sell any shares of NVIDIA, but I had to sell my holdings in order to raise more funds to invest in OpenAI."

It is worth noting that in the first three quarters of 2025, SoftBank reduced its holdings of T - Mobile shares by 56.9 million shares, cashing out $12.7 billion; in the fourth quarter, it reduced its holdings by another 12.5 million shares, cashing out $2.3 billion. In addition, SoftBank also completed the liquidation of its shares in Deutsche Bank and Alibaba.

The financing actions continue. In November 2025, SoftBank issued bonds worth 500 billion yen with a coupon rate of 3.98%. In April 2026, it issued sub - bonds worth 418 billion yen with a coupon rate of 4.97% in the first five years.

The core goal of Masayoshi Son's series of extreme financing, share - reducing, and bond - issuing operations is to heavily invest in OpenAI. Once OpenAI successfully enters the capital market, SoftBank's current financial and operational pressure will be greatly relieved.

Even with a huge debt burden, SoftBank still holds a core trump card. When Arm went public in 2024, SoftBank held approximately 90% of its shares, and the overall holding cost was only $32 billion. Currently, Arm's total market value is approximately $317.3 billion, and the market value corresponding to SoftBank's shares exceeds $280 billion. This is also one of SoftBank's most core asset trump cards.

Kanjian Finance believes that based on the current main line of the capital market, OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Google have formed the core investment main line of the AI track, and major top - tier investment institutions have also made differentiated layouts. For example, Abel, the leader of Berkshire, clearly made a heavy investment in Google. Although the holding scale is not large, it has clearly bet on the AI track he is optimistic about.

In addition, SB Energy under SoftBank Group has also started preparations for listing. According to foreign media reports, SB Energy plans to secretly submit a draft registration statement for an IPO to the US SEC. In January this year, SoftBank Group and OpenAI reached a consensus, and both sides will invest $500 million in SB Energy respectively.

Overall, if OpenAI and SB Energy can successfully complete their listings, Masayoshi Son will completely reverse the previous investment downturn and lead SoftBank back to the spotlight of the capital market.