The AI data center boom is looking as shaky as ever.
Nowhere is that more apparent than at the Japanese megafirm SoftBank — perhaps best known for bankrolling WeWork before its spectacular implosion — and which now seems to be standing on a financial snowpack that could collapse into an avalanche.
SoftBank backstopped OpenAI, the lab behind ChatGPT, with over $60 billion in risky debt financing. As the Financial Times reports, that move has now dragged the bank into an ominous loss of $7 billion between July and September, the company’s first quarterly loss in two years of business.
According to the FT, at least $3.7 billion of the loss is likely attributable to a massive OpenAI data center development in Ohio. SoftBank initially blamed that portion on financing for “existing and planned” data center projects there, before backtracking to say the losses are “completely unrelated” to any dealings in the buckeye state.
Compare SoftBank’s $7 billion overall drop to its profit of $2.17 billion the previous quarter, or its heady $15.64 billion profit over the third quarter of 2025, and it’s clear the firm is currently hemorrhaging money to keep some AI dreams alive.
Shares in the company have also plummeted by nearly 50 percent since June, the FT notes, as ratings downgrades and rising skepticism over the viability of the AI industry scare investors into safer corners of the market.
In order to keep pumping money into AI powerlabs like OpenAI, SoftBank itself has started digging into junk bonds — high-risk debt, essentially — raising over $11 billion in non-investment grade bonds in September.
So on top of boasting perhaps one of the highest degrees of exposure to the AI bubble on the planet, the Japanese investment firm is now the world-record holder for the largest corporate junk bond offering ever made. With a foundation this unstable, it’s no wonder SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son calls the AI bubble a myth — because if it exists, his megabank is in mega trouble.
More on data centers: Only One Town in America Voted in Favor to Building a New Data Center, and the Reason Why Is Bleak
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