SoftBank Group carried its OpenAI stake at a fair value of $99.6 billion on 30 September, against a cumulative investment of $54.6 billion, according to the financial report it published on 10 November. That is 1.82 times cost, by our arithmetic. The valuation was unchanged from the previous fiscal year-end, the report says, so the stake added no gain in the six months.
In the same six months SoftBank booked a ¥203.8 billion derivative loss on something else that went to OpenAI: warrants granted by Energy Global, part of the group, “as incentives under lessor lease arrangements related to data centers”. The report gives the loss for the six months and does not split it by quarter.
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The key insight: SoftBank Group carried its OpenAI stake at a $99.6 billion fair value on 30 September against a $54.6 billion cost, with no gain or loss in the six months, according to its financial report. In the same period it booked a ¥203.8 billion derivative loss on warrants Energy Global granted OpenAI as lease incentives.
The $54.6 billion cost includes indirect investments and is net of disposals. The accounting deck puts the cumulative gain at $45.0 billion: $1.1 billion recorded in the fiscal year to March 2025 and $43.9 billion in the year to March 2026. For the six months, the report says of Vision Fund 2: “No investment gain or loss was recorded on OpenAI”.
On 27 February SoftBank committed to $30.0 billion of follow-on investments in OpenAI, at a pre-money valuation of $730.0 billion. Vision Fund 2 paid $10.0 billion each on 1 April, 1 July and 1 October. That brought the cumulative investment to $64.6 billion and the ownership interest to approximately 13%, calculated as of 1 October on the basis the report sets out.
The carrying amount of the OpenAI shares at Vision Fund 2 was ¥15,671.5 billion at 30 September, up ¥2,946.0 billion as a result of the first two $10.0 billion tranches, the report says.
Selected SoftBank Group profit-or-loss items for the six months to 30 September 2026, in yen billions, from its consolidated financial report and accounting deck (unaudited). The OpenAI stake recorded no gain or loss because its valuation was unchanged from March.
How the Tranches Were Funded
SoftBank borrowed $10.0 billion in April and another $10.0 billion in July under a $40.0 billion bridge facility signed in March. By 15 September it had prepaid the full $30.0 billion drawn under the facility. The remaining $10.0 billion, meant for the third tranche, was canceled effective 30 September, and the third tranche was paid with proceeds from foreign-currency senior notes issued in September.
The prepayment was funded mainly by an $11.87 billion term loan, $7.35 billion raised through prepaid forward contracts backed by all of the group’s Intel shares, and a $5.0 billion increase in the margin loan backed by Arm shares.
In August a Vision Fund 2 subsidiary also drew $10.0 billion under a loan using the OpenAI shares, with SoftBank Group as guarantor; ¥1,543.7 billion of it was recorded as long-term borrowings at 30 September. The loan includes a mandatory prepayment clause that may be triggered by, among other things, a “significant decrease in the fair value of the OpenAI preferred shares held by SVF2”.
What ‘Warrants Given to OpenAI Under Leases’ Means
Here Energy Global is the landlord and OpenAI the tenant. The accounting deck says Energy Global, in January 2026, “Granted warrants to OpenAI as lease incentives under the Milam County data center lease agreement”. In August, “Some of the warrants were forfeited in conjunction with the execution of the PORTS-Pike data center lease agreement with OpenAI”.
The warrants are convertible into Energy Global’s ordinary equity interests. The report explains why they sit on the balance sheet as a liability rather than as equity: “As the number of ordinary equity interests to be issued upon exercise varies depending on the fair value of the entity at the time of exercise, the warrants are not classified as equity but are recognized as derivative financial liabilities”.
In plain terms, as the filing describes it: the warrants are measured at fair value, and the ¥203.8 billion loss was recorded “due to an increase in the fair value of warrants”. The deck says Energy Global’s own fair value rose in the six months “mainly due to expansion of its data center business”. A more valuable Energy Global made the warrants held by OpenAI worth more, and SoftBank booked that increase as a loss.
The August amendment worked the other way. The decrease in the liability from the amended terms, $2.4 billion, was deducted from the carrying amount of the lease incentive, which sits in other non-current assets. Net of both effects, the warrant liability fell ¥41.2 billion over the six months to ¥541.8 billion, from ¥583.0 billion in March.
The same rise in Energy Global’s value lifted a second line. The deck lists ¥136.0 billion of share-based compensation for Energy Global employees and directors in selling, general and administrative expenses, and says “Expenses increased as Energy Global’s fair value increased”.
Where It Sits in the Results
The report details two derivative losses for the six months: the warrant charge and ¥321.9 billion on the Intel prepaid forward contracts. The derivative loss line totaled ¥433.3 billion. Separately, the report books a ¥597.2 billion loss on power-generation equipment for US AI data centers, covered in SoftBank Swings to ¥1.1 Trillion Loss With a $3.7B Power Hit. The six-month net loss attributable to owners of the parent was ¥768.0 billion.
As we read the filing, two OpenAI-linked lines moved in opposite ways: the stake was held at 1.82 times cost by our arithmetic with no change, while the warrants given to OpenAI under the leases produced a loss because Energy Global became more valuable.
As we read Note 6, the loss and the balance sheet tell different stories: the warrant liability fell ¥41.2 billion to ¥541.8 billion because the August amendment cut it by $2.4 billion, even as the fair-value rise ran through profit or loss.
SoftBank Group consolidated financial report, 10 November 2026
“As the number of ordinary equity interests to be issued upon exercise varies depending on the fair value of the entity at the time of exercise, the warrants are not classified as equity but are recognized as derivative financial liabilities”
Three Implications
FOR THE OPENAI STAKE The report says the valuation was unchanged from March; the $10.0 billion October tranche lifted the cumulative investment to $64.6 billion and ownership to approximately 13%.
FOR THE LEASES The accounting deck ties the warrants to the Milam County lease in January 2026 and a partial forfeiture with the PORTS-Pike lease in August 2026.
FOR FUNDING The $30.0 billion drawn under the bridge facility was prepaid by 15 September and the undrawn $10.0 billion canceled; a $10.0 billion loan against the OpenAI shares, guaranteed by SoftBank Group, was drawn in August.
The framework argues: “The $1T capex cycle is being underwritten by a $1T concentrated demand commitment from two counterparties whose combined free cash flow is deeply negative.”
As we read it, the map asks who underwrites the spending; SoftBank’s filing shows its landlord business giving its tenant, OpenAI, warrants on its own equity, which grow more costly as that business gains value. The framework predates these results and does not discuss them.
What Is Not Established
The documents reviewed do not state how many warrants were granted or forfeited, their exercise terms, or the size of the Milam County and PORTS-Pike leases. They do not mention any OpenAI valuation other than the $730.0 billion pre-money figure for the follow-on tranches. The investor presentation and the 10 November earnings briefing were not reviewed for this piece.
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SoftBank Group held its OpenAI stake at $99.6 billion, 1.82 times its $54.6 billion cost by our arithmetic, with no gain or loss in the six months. The warrants Energy Global granted OpenAI as lease incentives produced a ¥203.8 billion derivative loss as Energy Global’s fair value rose, while the liability itself fell to ¥541.8 billion after the August amendment.
A note on sourcing. Every figure and quotation is from SoftBank Group’s consolidated financial report (English translation of its Japanese financial report) and its Q2 FY2026 accounting deck, published on 10 November 2026 (unaudited). The fair-value-to-cost multiple and the March warrant-liability rounding are our arithmetic.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
