Masayoshi Son in fundraising talks with UAE figures, FT reports
SoftBank's founder discusses possible new capital with senior figures in the UAE and elsewhere, the Financial Times reports
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Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's founder, has held talks with senior figures in the UAE and elsewhere about possible fundraising, the Financial Times reports. The report does not specify an amount or say what the money would fund.
SoftBank has gone to Gulf investors before. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were major backers of its first Vision Fund, which raised about $100 billion, Fortune reported, citing Bloomberg. In 2025 SoftBank closed the first round of a planned $100 billion investment fund, with money from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Company, alongside Apple and Qualcomm, according to The National. Son has separately steered almost $65 billion of SoftBank capital into OpenAI, according to Briefs.co.
The new talks come after SoftBank has leaned heavily on debt markets this year, raising its credit line to $6.5 billion and running a large high-yield bond sale to cover its AI commitments. Equity-based fundraising talks suggest the company wants to diversify away from debt as leverage climbs, particularly after it completed a $10 billion pledge to OpenAI alongside Nvidia. The UAE has shown appetite for large tech and infrastructure bets elsewhere, including a €40 billion commitment to Germany and a $3 billion round for the Boring Company, so Son's outreach fits a pattern of Gulf capital being courted by stretched balance sheets rather than pointing to any change in SoftBank's AI spending plans.