SoftBank’s promise to pay its highest-ever yields in a record $11 billion junk-bond offering highlights the pressure on CEO Masayoshi Son to secure returns on his all-in bet on artificial intelligence amid concerns about possible overheating in the market.
The SoftBank debt issuance last month added to a sharp surge in corporate borrowing this year, including major bond sales from Amazon, Alphabet and Tencent.
The scale of Son’s investments, which include backing totaling $64.6 billion for ChatGPT maker OpenAI, in particular, has made the technology-and-investing conglomerate a bellwether for AI sentiment.
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