Follow the Money
The circular economy of AI: chipmakers invest in labs that buy chips; clouds fund labs that buy cloud; the same dollars get announced twice. 79 live deals, $2,008B at face value plus 16 with no disclosed figure — each traced to a source. Data as of 2026-08-30 · JSON.
Showing 4 of 82 deals for SoftBank Group. Clear.
Bubble Thermometer: 47/100 — warm
47/100 (warm): "bubble" said 28× this week (up from 1); AI basket +1.8 pts vs QQQ over a month; $0B of deals announced this month.
Components: talk 73 · markets 59 · money 0 (weights 40/30/30). Each input links to where it comes from: "bubble" in this week's feed (28, prior week 1) · the AI basket against QQQ over a month · $0B announced in 2026-09. An attention index from this site's own data; it measures temperature, not the future.
Daily readings since 2026-09-16. JSON
SoftBank Group in focus: its curves keep their colour, the rest fade. The 22 busiest counterparties and the 4 live deals between them that match the filter. Click a company for its page, click a curve to jump to that deal and its source. Curve width scales with the amount (log); colour is the deal type; dashed means reported but not confirmed by the parties; thin means no figure was disclosed.
Announced per month — SoftBank Group
Face value as announced; the grey stubs are deals later cancelled or never closed, which stay out of the total. Click a month to list its deals.
Biggest counterparties
Announced and reported amounts at face value; "up to" commitments count in full — that is how the headlines count them, and why every row carries its notes. Every company name is a page.
4 deals, with sources
Amounts link to the source they come from; companies link to their pages; types, months and statuses filter the page; the # is the deal's anchor.
| Deal | Amount ▾ | Type | Announced | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| SoftBank → OpenAI | $30B Co-led the 2026 round ($110B announced 2026-02-27; closed 2026-03-31 at $122B and $852B post-money). | Equity investment | 2026-02-27 closed / funded | CNBC · second source #7cff70 |
| SoftBank → OpenAI | $30B March 2025 commitment (led the $40B round at $300B post-money): $7.5B at first closing (Apr 2025) + $22.5B at second closing (2025-12-26) via Vision Fund 2; co-investors added $11B (total $41B). SoftBank's stake ~11% after this. Funded partly by selling its entire Nvidia stake ($5.83B) and T-Mobile shares. | Equity investment | 2025-03-31 closed / funded | SoftBank Group press release · second source #8f5feb |
| SoftBank → Stargate JV | $19B Reported (The Information): SoftBank and OpenAI ~$19B each for ~40% each; Oracle and MGX ~$7B each. Headline '$500B' is planned spend, mostly project debt against compute contracts, not committed equity. | Equity investment | 2025-01-21 reported, not confirmed by the parties | DCD, citing The Information · second source single-source figure #515c3d |
| SoftBank → Intel | $2B Common stock at $23/share (~2% of Intel). | Equity investment | 2025-08-18 closed / funded | SoftBank Group press release · second source #6310f2 |
Deal Watch — reported in the last 45 days (automatic, unverified)
Headlines from the feed go through a model that extracts who-pays-whom; a report appears here only when two different publishers agree on the parties and the amounts agree within 25%. Every publisher name links to the headline. Nothing in this box is in the verified graph above until a data review confirms it against a primary source.
No two-source reports in the window — the extractor needs an AI provider key.
The bubble reads
- AI's $600B Question — Sequoia Capital (David Cahn), 2024-06-20. Annualised AI infrastructure spend implies about $600B of yearly AI revenue is needed to earn a return; most of it is missing.
- The GenAI Divide: State of AI in Business 2025 — MIT NANDA, 2025-07. Despite $30-40B of enterprise GenAI spend, about 95% of pilots show no measurable P&L impact.
- Bridging a $1.5tr Data Center Financing Gap — Morgan Stanley Research, 2025-08. About $2.9T of global data-center capex through 2028, only about half fundable from hyperscaler cash flow; the rest must come from bonds, private credit and securitisation.
- $2 trillion in new revenue needed to fund AI's scaling trend — Bain & Company, 6th Global Technology Report, 2025-09-23. Meeting projected 2030 compute demand needs about $2T of annual AI revenue; the industry is about $800B short.
- IMF and Bank of England join growing chorus warning of an AI bubble — IMF Global Financial Stability Report / Bank of England FPC, via CNBC, 2025-10-09. Both flagged AI-concentrated equity valuations comparable to the 2000 dot-com peak and the risk of an abrupt correction.
- World Outlook: '1999 meets 1990' — Deutsche Bank Research (Jim Reid), via Investing.com, 2026-06-06. Frames 2026 as 1999-style tech enthusiasm colliding with a 1990-style oil shock, with an AI investment boom propping up US growth.
Method: a deal is listed only when it traces to a press release, an SEC filing, or top-tier reporting, with its date and status. Amounts are as announced or credibly reported; status says whether a deal closed, is staged, or was only reported. Not investment advice.