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(Bloomberg) -- Shares of SoftBank Group Corp. jumped 12% after the company announced it’s teaming up with OpenAI, Oracle Corp. and Abu Dhabi-backed MGX on a $500 billion project to build data centers and infrastructure in the US for the ChatGPT creator.
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The stock rose in its biggest intraday surge since August after SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son said the four would invest in a joint venture that would spend $100 billion “immediately” on infrastructure and target spending at least $500 billion over the next four years to build more computing power. Companies including Microsoft Corp. and chipmaker Nvidia Corp. will supply technology, SoftBank said in a statement after US President Donald Trump announced the AI push.
Oracle rallied 4.6% while SoftBank’s chip-designer unit Arm Holdings Plc. gained 4.8% in New York trading.
While funding considerations for the Stargate project remains key, the Japanese tech conglomerate’s participation alongside AI heavyweights “shows how valuable the quality and combination of SoftBank’s assets and tech investment management capabilities are seen to be,” at this point in time, Macquarie analyst Paul Golding said in a note to investors.
The announcement comes on the heels of Son’s pledge to invest $100 billion in the US over the next four years during a press event at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. That deal was expected to include investments in artificial intelligence, data centers, semiconductors and energy. It was not immediately clear if the two announcements are for the same or different projects.
As the scale of projects touted by Son snowballs to hundreds billions of dollars, many question how the huge sums of money will be bankrolled. SoftBank has stakes in hundreds of startups as well as a 90% stake in Arm that it can sell to finance any big bet.
What Bloomberg Intelligence Says:
SoftBank Group’s investment in Stargate — a joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle and MGX to invest $500 billion over the next four years in AI infrastructure in the US — could lead to a weaker loan-to-value, assuming it doesn’t raise external capital. It may have around $30 billion of headroom under S&P’s 30% adjusted LTV limit and has a track record of managing leverage through asset sales, with its stake in Arm currently valued at over $140 billion.