Apollo Mulls Raising SoftBank Loan to $9 Billion to Fund OpenAI Bets

Apollo Global Management is in talks with SoftBank Group about boosting a loan to $9 billion from $5.4 billion to help the Japanese firm finance its investment in OpenAI, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The financing, backed by assets in SoftBank's Vision Fund 2, has not been finalized, the people said, requesting anonymity because the talks are private, and representatives for Apollo and SoftBank declined to comment. Apollo made the so-called net-asset-value loan to SoftBank's venture-capital fund in 2021 and boosted it by $900 million last year to $5.4 billion; NAV loans borrow against fund assets to help private-capital firms raise cash. SoftBank has become one of the world's biggest AI investors, putting the borrowings behind that push in the spotlight. The cost of insuring its debt against credit risks has climbed, with credit-default swaps rising this week to a three-year high amid a broader flareup in concerns about AI safety. The company has also held investor meetings in New York this week to gauge interest in a potential overseas junk-bond sale that people familiar with the matter previously said could raise $10 billion to $20 billion. Vision Fund 2 has made more than 300 investments since inception and has recently been putting more into OpenAI. SoftBank has committed to invest $64.6 billion in OpenAI, whose CEO Sam Altman recently said a long-anticipated IPO is still in the works but will not happen this year as some investors had expected, with the listing pushed to 2027 as the company focuses on addressing safety issues. SoftBank has been tapping its stake for liquidity, raising a $10 billion loan backed by its OpenAI holding from lenders including Apollo in August. Vision Fund 2, which had more than $100 billion of committed capital as of February, counts billionaire founder Masayoshi Son and SoftBank itself as its largest investors.