SoftBank Group is negotiating a bridge loan of up to $16.5 billion to fund its artificial intelligence investments in the United States, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. If finalized, the deal would mark the largest U.S. dollar-denominated loan in the Japanese conglomerate's history.

The loan, which has a term of about 12 months, is still just being talked about. Reports say that SoftBank is trying to get a number of banks to join the deal. Bloomberg says that the terms of the loan could change.The suggested loan comes after SoftBank helped OpenAI raise $40 billion in new funding. OpenAI is now worth about $300 billion. Bloomberg said that the business deal is the biggest private capital raise in the history of AI.SoftBank plans to use the money from the bridge loan to support its AI growth in U.S. data centers, robot systems, and chip businesses. The company has a big stake in Arm Holdings (ARM, Financials), which is a major player in making AI chips.SoftBank is also in charge of the Stargate project, which is a big AI infrastructure project that was started with OpenAI, Oracle Corporation (ORCL, Financials), and the MGX Fund in Abu Dhabi. It's planned that the project will spend up to $500 billion over four years to build fast data centers that will help the growth of artificial general intelligence. According to Bloomberg, the first part of Stargate will cost $100 billion and will create more than 100,000 jobs in the US.The $16.5 billion bridge loan would be bigger than SoftBank's biggest U.S. loan before this one, which was a $10 billion margin loan backed by shares in Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (BABA, Financials) in 2021.Bridge loans are usually short-term loans used to keep the cash flow going until more stable funds can be found. Within SoftBank's case, the money would likely be used as a short-term fix while longer-term financial plans for its AI projects in the U.S. are settled.

This article first appeared on GuruFocus.

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