the subscriber

SoftBank is raising $6.3 billion dollars from Japanese retail investors. These are ordinary investors — the pension-holders, salary workers, and retirees who make up the kind of audience that attends financial planning seminars and leaves with a folder of material and renewed uncertainty about the future.

The money will go to Masayoshi Son, who will give it to OpenAI.

OpenAI builds artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is, depending on who you ask, either (a) a tool that augments human productivity, or (b) a system that performs tasks previously done by employed people. These descriptions are not mutually exclusive. The tasks it performs most efficiently tend to be the ones performed by salaried office workers — a category that overlaps substantially with Japanese retail investors.

Masayoshi Son has, in various public statements over the years, compared himself to Noah, building an ark before the flood. He has described the OpenAI investment as his life's mission. He has not described, in any promotional material I have located, the relationship between the ark and the people selling bonds to fund it.

A bond is a financial instrument in which a person gives money to a company and receives, in return, a promise of repayment and interest. This is the standard definition. It does not typically include a clause about what the company does with the money, or in which industries it operates, or who is affected. Investors are expected to conduct their own research.

I am not suggesting anyone at SoftBank has done anything improper. I am noting that the mechanism for funding the flood is a bond offered to the people standing at the waterline.