SoftBank and OpenAI Launch Joint Venture in Japan, Unveiling Cristal AI Service

SoftBank suspends DeepSeek usage amid OpenAI collaboration

On February 3, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman joined SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son at a major AI briefing in Japan, attended by executives from 500 top companies. During the event, they announced the launch of their joint venture, "SB OpenAI Japan," and introduced "Cristal Intelligence," an AI tool tailored for enterprise use. SoftBank's US$3 Billion Investment to support AI Integration According to reports from Nikkei and ITmedia, Son revealed that SoftBank Group will invest US$3 billion annually into SB OpenAI Japan. This funding will help integrate Cristal Intelligence into SoftBank's various subsidiaries, including SoftBank Telecom, Arm, LY, ZOZO, and others, advancing AI tools across these businesses. In January, Son and Altman unveiled the "Stargate" project in the presence of US President Donald Trump, with plans to invest US$50 billion in AI development in the US over the next four years. The US$3 billion annual investment in SB OpenAI Japan is seen as a key component of this broader initiative. This collaboration offers crucial financial backing for OpenAI. Despite generating US$3.7 billion in revenue in 2024, OpenAI experienced a US$5 billion loss due to its early investments in AI chips. The US$3 billion from SB OpenAI Japan is expected to significantly improve OpenAI's financial outlook. Cristal Intelligence, the AI tool introduced at the event, can autonomously analyze internal documents, codes, meeting notes, and more. It serves as an AI agent to drive business transformation and foster service innovation. SB OpenAI Japan plans to promote Cristal Intelligence in Japan and establish data centers to ensure the safety of AI inference and training processes. As data sovereignty has become a priority in many countries, including Japan, there is a growing emphasis on reducing dependency on foreign technologies that could lead to a loss of control. If AI training and inference were to rely solely on US-based data centers, Japan's competitiveness in AI may fall behind. Son acknowledged that while Cristal Intelligence's training and development would remain based in the US, the collaborative structure of SB OpenAI Japan would mitigate the risks of creating an over-reliant relationship between Japan and OpenAI. Arm, SoftBank's UK-based subsidiary, also played a key role in the event, hinting at its involvement in providing hardware for Japan's upcoming data centers. SoftBank Suspends use of DeepSeek amid security concerns Throughout the event, Son expressed interest in the developments of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup. He inquired about its lower-cost AI models that are comparable to OpenAI's ChatGPT, as well as the company's breakthroughs in creating smaller, more efficient AI models. While Son showed interest in DeepSeek's innovations, he also reiterated OpenAI's focus on AI safety. OpenAI has committed to being transparent about the potential risks of misuse in its major AI models and ensuring that responses adhere to ethical guidelines to avoid harmful content. Following the event, SoftBank's subsidiaries were instructed to temporarily suspend the use of DeepSeek's chatbot services until security concerns could be resolved. Uncertainty in AI adoption for Japanese businesses Despite the excitement surrounding the launch of SB OpenAI Japan's services, Japanese companies remain cautious about entrusting sensitive data to external service providers. The widespread adoption of AI services offered by SB OpenAI Japan is still uncertain, as businesses may be hesitant to rely on a single provider, especially if switching to another generative AI service becomes difficult in the future. This issue has already been seen in the cloud service sector, where clients have struggled to reject unilateral price hikes from service providers. Furthermore, SB OpenAI Japan's services are still facing uncertainties, including potential costs and other challenges in the adoption process. This strategic partnership marks a significant step in the advancement of AI technology in Japan, yet the broader implications of data sovereignty, security concerns, and long-term business adoption remain to be fully seen.

OpenAI and SoftBank announce artificial intelligence joint venture

Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group and OpenAI stepped up their AI partnership Monday, setting up a 50-50 held company called SB OpenAI Japan. SoftBank Chief Masayoshi Son and OpenAI Chief Sam Altman appeared at an event in Tokyo, talking up their collaboration and inviting Japanese companies to join. Son, holding a shiny blue crystal ball as a symbolic prop, said its AI service Cristal could be used by companies for planning, marketing, emails, and figuring out old source codes. Cristal will first roll out in Son's own SoftBank Group companies, which include Arm, a semiconductor and software company, and PayPay, an electronic payment service. SoftBank said it plans to spend $3 billion a year to integrate Cristal across its companies. "This will be superintelligence for the company. I'm so excited," Son told reporters and other participants at the Transforming Business through AI event. Altman talked about the just announced "deep research," which allows ChatGPT to carry out more complicated tasks, including preparing reports by browsing the web and finding thousands of sources far more quickly than a human worker. Deep research will be available in Japan in the Japanese language, he said. "This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies, starting with Japan," said Altman. SoftBank and OpenAI, along with Oracle, are part of the Stargate project supported by President Donald Trump, investing up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. Son said Stargate will expand into Japan, as well as other nations. The technology sector has been shaken by the recent announcement from Chinese newcomer DeepSeek that it has come up with very smart but low-cost AI.

SoftBank and OpenAI set up joint company to push artificial intelligence services

TOKYO -- Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group and OpenAI stepped up their AI partnership Monday, setting up a 50-50 held company called SB OpenAI Japan. SoftBank Chief Masayoshi Son and OpenAI Chief Sam Altman appeared at an event in Tokyo, talking up their collaboration and inviting Japanese companies to join. Son, holding a shiny blue crystal ball as a symbolic prop, said its AI service Cristal could be used by companies for planning, marketing, emails and figuring out old source codes. Cristal will first roll out in Son's own SoftBank Group companies, which include Arm, a semiconductor and software company, and PayPay, an electronic payment service. SoftBank said it plans to spend $3 billion a year to integrate Cristal across its companies. "This will be super-intelligence for the company. I'm so excited," Son told reporters and other participants at the Transforming Business through AI event. Altman talked about the just announced "deep research," which allows ChatGPT to carry out more complicated tasks, including preparing reports by browsing the web and finding thousands of sources far more quickly than a human worker. Deep research will be available in Japan in the Japanese language, he said. "This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies, starting with Japan," said Altman. SoftBank and OpenAI, along with Oracle, are part of the Stargate project supported by President Donald Trump, investing up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. Son said Stargate will expand into Japan, as well as other nations. The technology sector has been shaken by the recent announcement from Chinese newcomer DeepSeek that it has come up with very smart but low-cost AI.

SoftBank and OpenAI set up joint company to push artificial intelligence services

Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group and OpenAI stepped up their AI partnership Monday, setting up a 50-50 held company called SB OpenAI Japan. SoftBank Chief Masayoshi Son and OpenAI Chief Sam Altman appeared at an event in Tokyo, talking up their collaboration and inviting Japanese companies to join. Son, holding a shiny blue crystal ball as a symbolic prop, said its AI service Cristal could be used by companies for planning, marketing, emails and figuring out old source codes. Cristal will first roll out in Son's own SoftBank Group companies, which include Arm, a semiconductor and software company, and PayPay, an electronic payment service. SoftBank said it plans to spend $3 billion a year to integrate Cristal across its companies. "This will be super-intelligence for the company. I'm so excited," Son told reporters and other participants at the Transforming Business through AI event. Altman talked about the just announced "deep research," which allows ChatGPT to carry out more complicated tasks, including preparing reports by browsing the web and finding thousands of sources far more quickly than a human worker. Deep research will be available in Japan in the Japanese language, he said. "This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies, starting with Japan," said Altman. SoftBank and OpenAI, along with Oracle, are part of the Stargate project supported by President Donald Trump, investing up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. Son said Stargate will expand into Japan, as well as other nations. The technology sector has been shaken by the recent announcement from Chinese newcomer DeepSeek that it has come up with very smart but low-cost AI. © 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

SoftBank and OpenAI set up joint company to push artificial intelligence services

TOKYO (AP) -- Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group and OpenAI stepped up their AI partnership Monday, setting up a 50-50 held company called SB OpenAI Japan. SoftBank Chief Masayoshi Son and OpenAI Chief Sam Altman appeared at an event in Tokyo, talking up their collaboration and inviting Japanese companies to join. Son, holding a shiny blue crystal ball as a symbolic prop, said its AI service Cristal could be used by companies for planning, marketing, emails and figuring out old source codes. Cristal will first roll out in Son's own SoftBank Group companies, which include Arm, a semiconductor and software company, and PayPay, an electronic payment service. SoftBank said it plans to spend $3 billion a year to integrate Cristal across its companies. "This will be super-intelligence for the company. I'm so excited," Son told reporters and other participants at the Transforming Business through AI event. Altman talked about the just announced "deep research," which allows ChatGPT to carry out more complicated tasks, including preparing reports by browsing the web and finding thousands of sources far more quickly than a human worker. Deep research will be available in Japan in the Japanese language, he said. "This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies, starting with Japan," said Altman. SoftBank and OpenAI, along with Oracle, are part of the Stargate project supported by President Donald Trump, investing up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. Son said Stargate will expand into Japan, as well as other nations. The technology sector has been shaken by the recent announcement from Chinese newcomer DeepSeek that it has come up with very smart but low-cost AI.

SoftBank and OpenAI set up joint firm to push artificial intelligence services | BreakingNews.ie

Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group and OpenAI have stepped up their AI partnership, setting up a 50-50 held company called SB OpenAI Japan. SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son and OpenAI supremo Sam Altman appeared at an event in Tokyo, talking up their collaboration and inviting Japanese companies to join. During the launch, Mr Son, holding a shiny blue crystal ball as a symbolic prop, said its AI service Cristal could be used by companies for planning, marketing, emails and figuring out old source codes. Cristal will first roll out in Mr Son's own SoftBank Group companies, which include Arm, a semiconductor and software company, and PayPay, an electronic payment service. SoftBank said it plans to spend three billion dollars (£2.42 billion) a year to integrate Cristal across its companies. "This will be super-intelligence for the company. I'm so excited," Mr Son told reporters and other participants at the Transforming Business through AI event. Mr Altman talked about the just announced "deep research", which allows ChatGPT to carry out more complicated tasks, including preparing reports by browsing the web and finding thousands of sources far more quickly than a human worker. Deep research will be available in Japan in the Japanese language, he said, adding: "This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies, starting with Japan." SoftBank and OpenAI, along with Oracle, are part of the Stargate project supported by President Donald Trump, investing up to 500 billion dollars (£403 billion) in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. Mr Son said Stargate will expand into Japan, as well as other nations. The technology sector has been shaken by the recent announcement from Chinese newcomer DeepSeek that it has come up with very smart but low-cost AI.

OpenAI, SoftBank Team Up to Develop AI for Japan Businesses

(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI and SoftBank Group Corp. are joining forces in a joint venture to sell AI services to businesses across Japan, one of the broadest efforts yet to sell the fast-growing startup's tools to enterprise customers outside of the US. OpenAI chief Sam Altman is on a global tour jetting between Tokyo, Seoul, New Delhi, Dubai and Germany. On Monday, he and SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son took to a Tokyo stage to outline a 50-50 venture between OpenAI and SoftBank's telecom arm SoftBank Corp. before a meeting with Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. The venture will hire 1,000 people to market OpenAI products to Japanese industries from automakers to retailers, Son said. He said SoftBank's own group companies -- including LY Corp. and PayPay Corp. -- will collectively use the US company's tools to the tune of about $3 billion a year. The tie-up underscores SoftBank's emergent role in driving AI development around the world, from leading the $100 billion Stargate endeavor in the US to a years-long effort to build datacenters in its home country of Japan. It also points to Son's embrace of OpenAI's model of seeking ever-larger troves of data to generate the best outcomes. "If more is better, we should do a lot. More brain is definitely better," Son said during a press event, where he shared a Tokyo stage with Altman. He made an apparent nod to the popularity of Chinese startup DeepSeek's cheaper AI model now challenging the premise underpinning the need for big AI spending: "Some people say you can do small -- compressed -- but that's just small." SoftBank joins a growing roster of tech leaders including Meta Platforms Inc. to Microsoft Corp. that are spending billions of dollars to lay the foundation for future AI development and use. "The world is going to need so much compute," Altman told Son, painting an imminent future of AI breakthroughs in healthcare and robotics. "The returns on a linear increase in intelligence is exponential in terms of value. It takes a lot of capex, but it creates that much revenue." Shares of SoftBank closed up 0.5%, erasing losses at the beginning of the day. Japan, which largely missed the initial wave of growth from the internet, can't afford to lose another three decades, Son has said. But the resource-poor country remains constrained in its pursuit of AI by the high price of imported oil and gas. The public is also wary about nuclear power following the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns in a country that experiences hundreds of noticeable quakes a year. "The spread of AI remains slow, compared with the US," Ishiba said during his meeting with Altman and Son Monday evening. Just weeks before, Altman and Son had appeared alongside US President Donald Trump, who unveiled the companies' multibillion-dollar project to build data centers and infrastructure in the US for the ChatGPT creator. With support from Oracle Corp. and Abu Dhabi-backed MGX, the Stargate Project targets spending some $500 billion over the next four years to build more computing power. Ishiba sought feedback on how to strengthen Japan's AI arena and on an upcoming meeting with Trump later this week, Son said after the closed-door meeting. The prime minister had earlier praised Son for winning Trump's "immense trust." During the press event, Son brought a purple crystal onto the stage, an allusion to a metaphor he used when he bought Arm in 2016 as a means to see into the future of technology. Joined on stage by Arm Chief Executive Officer Rene Haas and Junichi Miyakawa, head of SoftBank's telecom arm, Son dubbed the joint venture's enterprise AI "Cristal intelligence." "I'm just so excited," Son said. "Cristal can make the best decision based on updated information on top of every piece of data from the past in its long-term memory." --With assistance from Shirin Ghaffary and Vlad Savov.

SoftBank's Masayoshi Son says AGI will arrive 'much earlier' than he thought

Jay Peters is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. SoftBank isn't just part of the group investing $500 billion into Project Stargate to build American AI infrastructure capacity for OpenAI. It's also making a Japanese joint venture with OpenAI, will spend $3 billion deploying OpenAI tech across SoftBank companies, and claims it will revolutionize business with AI agents through a new AI system called "Cristal intelligence." SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, who also invested billions in WeWork, claimed at an announcement event in Tokyo that artificial general intelligence, or AGI will come "much earlier" than his previous two- to three-year prediction, The Wall Street Journal reports. That could be helped, of course, by changes in the definition of AGI, as explained recently by his new partner, Sam Altman. In the release, SoftBank highlights how AI agents "will automate everyday tasks" for knowledge work. SoftBank shared some vague examples of how it will use Cristal Intelligence at Arm and SoftBank Corp., which it owns: Arm, which designs many of the chips and servers used by AI companies, says it will use the tech to "drive innovation and boost productivity across the company," while SoftBank Corp. plans to "automate over 100 million workflows" to "boost efficiency and enable the creation of new business opportunities within its ecosystem." Son announced Cristal Intelligence at an event in Tokyo where he held a crystal ball. The SoftBank and OpenAI joint venture, called "SB OpenAI Japan," will be owned 50-50 between the two companies. The joint venture will "market Cristal intelligence exclusively to major companies in Japan," per the press release.

SoftBank, OpenAI to Develop Cristal Intelligence - an Advanced Enterprise AI

The companies also established a joint venture called SB OpenAI Japan. SoftBank Group, a Japanese investment firm, announced a partnership to "develop and market" an enterprise AI solution called 'Cristal intelligence'. "Cristal intelligence will securely integrate the systems and data of individual enterprises in a way that is customized specifically for each company," an announcement from SoftBank stated. SoftBank also revealed that they will spend $3 billion annually to deploy OpenAI's solutions across all the companies in their group, which includes the chip design giant Arm. "SoftBank Corp. plans to automate over 100 million workflows by using Cristal intelligence, while providing data and additional training in a secure manner," read the report. They also revealed Arm will utilise Cristal intelligence to "drive innovation and boost productivity in the company". The companies also announced the establishment of a joint venture called SB OpenAI Japan, which is said to accelerate the deployment and marketing of Cristal intelligence. The joint venture will be "owned fifty-fifty by OpenAI and a company established by SoftBank Group Corp". This joint venture is said to build a secure environment for additional training and fine-tuning Cristal intelligence data. In this venture, OpenAI will contribute to AI research, technology and engineering, while SoftBank will provide its sales staff, operational expertise, and business insights. Furthermore, Arm's compute platform will provide the necessary computational demands to support and deploy AI agents. "SoftBank Group is fully committed to leveraging the new products across our entire organisation and utilise our great partnership with OpenAI to drive the AI revolution forward," said Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank and The Stargate Project chairman. Earlier, it was reported that SoftBank was in discussions to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI, which would make it the startup's largest backer. In November last year, OpenAI allowed employees to sell $1.5 billion in shares to SoftBank, as per reports. A CNBC report stated that Son has been pushing for a larger stake in OpenAI after having previously invested in The Stargate Project. The Stargate Project, is a $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative backed by tech titans such as Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, Son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. An initial investment of $100 billion will be deployed immediately. This initiative is expected to reinforce US leadership in AI, create hundreds of thousands of jobs, and contribute to global economic growth. The project focuses on fortifying national security measures for the US and its global partners. The announcement comes as a part of Altman's world tour, where he is travelling to Japan, India, Dubai, South Korea, France and Germany to enhance the company's global partnerships. In Japan, OpenAI also announced a new feature called deep research for ChatGPT Pro Users, which conducts "multi-step research" from sources available on the internet to curate a comprehensive report "at the level of a research analyst".

SoftBank commits to joint venture with OpenAI, will spend $3 billion per year to use ChatGPT Enterprise and other products

SoftBank has committed to spending $3 billion per year for itself and its subsidiaries to use OpenAI's tech, according to a joint announcement on Monday. The two also announced a new joint venture, billed as "SB OpenAI Japan," which will market OpenAI's enterprise tech exclusively to major companies in Japan. The deal will give SoftBank and its subsidiaries access to ChatGPT Enterprise, OpenAI's API, custom models and agent products such as Operator, which it describes as "an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you," such as planning vacations and filling out forms. It also will include access to OpenAI's newest agent feature, once it launches: a tool called "Deep Research" which OpenAI says will be able to conduct multi-step analysis on the web. SoftBank branded all the OpenAI products it will use as a suite of tools "Cristal Intelligence." Arm, the British chip designer acquired by SoftBank in 2016, will also use OpenAI tools to "boost productivity across the company," according to the announcement. At a livestreamed event early Monday morning, which was jointly held by SoftBank, SoftBank Group, OpenAI and Arm, executives in the audience represented companies that collectively accounted for more than half of Japan's total market capitalization, according to SoftBank. During the presentation, Son said that he believes artificial general intelligence, or AGI -- a vaguely defined benchmark referring to AI that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks -- will be a reality in fewer than 10 years. Son said via a translator that he believes "AGI can be achieved in large enterprise businesses first," adding that to achieve it, "quite the huge amount of money is necessary" and that such funds are "only available in large enterprises at the moment." News of SoftBank and OpenAI's strategic partnership comes days after CNBC confirmed that OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $40 billion in a funding round led by Masayoshi Son's SoftBank at a valuation of up to $340 billion. SoftBank would contribute between $15 billion and $25 billion, according to two people familiar with the negotiations who asked not to be named because the talks are ongoing. If the round were completed, SoftBank would surpass Microsoft as OpenAI's top backer. Part of the funding may be used for OpenAI's commitment to Stargate, a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle that was introduced by President Donald Trump last week, the sources said. The plan calls for billions of dollars to be invested in U.S. AI infrastructure. During the presentation Monday morning, Son said he was looking forward to working with OpenAI, Oracle and others on the Stargate project. OpenAI was last valued at $157 billion by private investors. In late 2022, the company launched its ChatGPT chatbot, kicking off a boom in generative AI. OpenAI closed its latest $6.6 billion round in October, gearing up to aggressively compete with Elon Musk's xAI, as well as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Anthropic. Meanwhile, Chinese startup lab DeepSeek has gone viral in the U.S, presenting fresh competition to OpenAI. DeepSeek saw its app soar to the top of Apple's App Store rankings this week and roiled U.S. markets on reports that its powerful model was trained at a fraction of the cost of U.S. competitors. At an event in Washington, D.C. on Thursday hosted by OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman said DeepSeek is "clearly a great model." "This is a reminder of the level of competition and the need for democratic Al to win," he said. He said it also points to the "level of interest in reasoning, the level of interest in open source."

OpenAI and SoftBank Partner on Enterprise AI Solutions in Japan | PYMNTS.com

OpenAI and the SoftBank Group agreed to establish a joint venture company that will market enterprise artificial intelligence solutions to major companies in Japan. The joint venture, SB OpenAI Japan, will market enterprise AI called "Cristal intelligence," which will be developed and marketed by the two companies, according to a Monday (Feb. 3) press release. In addition, SoftBank will spend $3 billion annually to integrate Cristal intelligence and existing tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT Enterprise across its group companies, according to the release. "This initiative will not only transform the way SoftBank Group operates but also revolutionize the way companies work in Japan and around the globe," SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son said in the release. SoftBank Group companies like SoftBank and Arm will use Cristal intelligence to drive innovation, boost productivity and automate over 100 million workflows, according to the release. The companies will have priority access in Japan to OpenAI's latest and most advanced AI models, the release said. Together with OpenAI, they aim to develop AI agents that will automate generating financial reports, drafting documents, managing customer inquiries and other everyday tasks, per the release. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in the release: "This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies -- starting with Japan." It was reported Thursday (Jan. 30) that OpenAI is in talks for a $40 billion funding round that would value it at $300 billion, and that the round would be led by SoftBank, which would invest between $15 billion and $25 billion. Some of the capital raised in the round would go toward the $18 billion OpenAI has committed to contribute to the Stargate AI infrastructure joint venture, which also includes SoftBank, while other capital would support OpenAI's money-losing operations. Stargate is an up-to-$500 billion project announced by President Donald Trump that aims to build big AI-focused data centers in the United States. The project's equity partners are SoftBank, which will be responsible for funding the venture, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX, an AI-focused sovereign wealth fund based in Dubai.

SoftBank and OpenAI Announce Partnership to Develop and Market Cristal Intelligence

SoftBank aims to boost productivity with the deployment of over 100 million automated workflows. SoftBank Group and OpenAI have announced a partnership to develop and market "Cristal Intelligence," an Advanced enterprise AI solution designed to integrate with and optimise company-specific systems and data. SoftBank Group will invest USD 3 billion annually to deploy OpenAI's AI solutions across its group companies, including Arm and SoftBank Corp. This deployment makes it the "first company in the world to integrate Cristal intelligence at scale, as well as deploying existing tools like ChatGPT Enterprise to employees across the entire group," SoftBank Group announced on Monday. Also Read: SoftBank CEO Predicts 2025 Will Be a Year of Unprecedented Upheavals Hinging on AI Furthermore, to accelerate the deployment of Cristal intelligence customised for Japan-based companies, OpenAI and the SoftBank Group agreed to establish a joint venture (JV) company called "SB OpenAI Japan." This JV will market Cristal intelligence exclusively to major companies in Japan. This collaboration aims to empower enterprises by automating tasks such as document generation, customer management, and financial reporting, allowing professionals to focus on more strategic and creative work. "In 2024, OpenAI launched their o1-series, AI models capable of reasoning. In 2025, these models will evolve into agents, AIs capable of doing work for you independently - you give it a task and it will execute it," SoftBank said. "By deploying Cristal intelligence across the entire SoftBank Group, we will accelerate the development and adoption of AI agents and more advanced systems," Japan's SoftBank added. Under the agreement, SoftBank Group companies, including Arm and SoftBank Corp., will get priority access in Japan to the latest models developed by OpenAI. Arm will use Cristal intelligence to drive innovation and boost productivity, while SoftBank Corp. plans to automate over 100 million workflows by using Cristal intelligence across its operations?. SoftBank Corp. aims to boost efficiency and enable the creation of new business opportunities within its ecosystem. "By automating and autonomizing all of its tasks and workflows, SoftBank Corp. will transform its business and services, and create new value," the official release said. The joint venture, owned equally by OpenAI and SoftBank, will focus on offering an environment for Japanese firms to fine-tune and train AI models using their proprietary data. This will enable enterprises to develop AI agents fully integrated with their existing IT infrastructure. "The JV will serve as a springboard for introducing AI agents tailored to the unique needs of Japanese enterprises while setting a model for global adoption," SoftBank said, adding, "To fully maximise the benefits of AI, it is essential for enterprises to be able to conduct additional training and fine-tuning in their own IT environments." Also Read: Expect Artificial Super Intelligence by 2035, Says SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., said: "This initiative will not only transform the way SoftBank Group operates but also revolutionise the way companies work in Japan and around the globe. SoftBank Group is fully committed to leveraging the new products across our entire organization and utilise our great partnership with OpenAI to drive the AI Revolution forward." Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said: "This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies -- starting with Japan." Rene Haas, CEO of Arm, said: "Arm is partnering with OpenAI and SoftBank to drive unprecedented productivity across the global technology ecosystem, setting new benchmarks and building a future in which AI agents span from edge to cloud on Arm. We are at the forefront of the AI revolution, and our high-performance, energy-efficient compute is going to be critical to advancing the Cristal intelligence." Also Read: SoftBank and Nvidia Build AI-Powered 5G Network Using AI Aerial Junichi Miyakawa, President and CEO of SoftBank Corp., added: "To realise our long-term vision of building next-generation social infrastructure with the aim of implementing AI into society, SoftBank Corp. has been promoting various initiatives, including the buildout of distributed AI data centers and Japan top-level AI computing platforms. I'm greatly looking forward to seeing how we can transform Japan's businesses through our partnership with OpenAI. By supporting the implementation and utilization of Cristal intelligence, we'll transform the management and operational practices of our clients."

SoftBank and OpenAI seize the moment with new Stargate AI initiative

The newly set up company, SB OpenAI Japan, aims to take maximum advantage of President Trump's Stargate initiative and will be owned jointly by Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group and OpenAI. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son and OpenAI boss Sam Altman appeared at an event in Tokyo talk about their collaboration and invite Japanese companies to join. Son, holding a shiny blue crystal ball as a symbolic prop, said its AI service Cristal could be used by companies for planning, marketing, emails and figuring out old source codes. Cristal will first roll out in Son's own SoftBank Group companies, which include Arm, a semiconductor and software company, and electronic payment service PayPay. SoftBank said it plans to spend $3 billion (€2.9 billion) a year to integrate Cristal across its companies. "This will be super-intelligence for the company. I'm so excited", Son told reporters and other participants at the Transforming Business through AI event. Altman talked about the just announced "deep research", which allows ChatGPT to carry out more complicated tasks, including preparing reports by browsing the web and finding thousands of sources far more quickly than a human worker. Deep research will be available in Japan in the Japanese language, he said. "This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies, starting with Japan", said Altman. SoftBank and OpenAI, along with Oracle, are part of the Stargate project supported by President Trump, investing up to $500 billion (€4.9 billion) in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. Son said Stargate will expand into Japan, as well as other nations. The technology sector has been shaken by the recent announcement from Chinese newcomer DeepSeek that it has come up with very effective but low-cost AI.

OpenAI, SoftBank Form Joint Venture for AI Services

SoftBank, whose portfolio of companies includes chip-design giant Arm Holdings, will also spend $3 billion a year to deploy Cristal across its businesses. OpenAI has formed a joint venture with SoftBank Group to expand artificial intelligence (AI) services for businesses globally, starting with those in Japan. SoftBank, which is headquartered in Japan, will drive the push to integrate and customize OpenAI's tools into companies. The two firms have set up a 50-50 joint venture called SP OpenAI Japan to deploy their Advanced Enterprise AI system, which they have dubbed "Cristal intelligence." Cristal will be rolled out among SoftBank companies, including chip-design giant Arm Holdings (ARM), which will use it to "boost productivity across the company." SoftBank said it would spend $3 billion a year to use the ChatGPT owner's technology across its businesses. The move by OpenAI comes just a week after markets globally tumbled as a low-cost super-efficient model released by Chinese startup DeepSeek upended the AI industry. OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle (ORCL) formed a joint venture together last month to build AI infrastructure in the U.S. Dubbed Stargate, the project will see the companies invest as much as $500 billion over the next four years in what U.S. President Donald Trump has called the "largest AI infrastructure project in history."

SoftBank, OpenAI to Offer AI Services in Japan -- Update

SoftBank Group and ChatGPT maker OpenAI plan to team up to offer artificial-intelligence services, initially targeting Japanese businesses to lay the groundwork for potential expansion worldwide. SoftBank Group Chief Executive Masayoshi Son said Monday that the company will assign 1,000 employees this year to the joint venture, SB OpenAI Japan, to kick-start its sales and engineering work. The 50-50 joint venture will begin offering the services first in Japan and establish a model for global adoption, the companies said Monday. As the first case, the Japanese technology investment company will spend $3 billion annually to use OpenAI's technology across its group businesses, they said. The joint venture will be a unit of domestic mobile business SoftBank Corp. Son said that artificial general intelligence, in which computers have human-level cognitive abilities, will likely be realized faster in the world of big corporations than that of individuals because the former has ample financial resources and vast amounts of specific data to train computers. Just a few months ago, Son predicted that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, would be achieved within two to three years. "I now realize that AGI would come much earlier," he said Monday. In January, SoftBank Group and OpenAI announced a plan to invest up to half a trillion dollars in AI infrastructure in the U.S., together with other partners such as Oracle and Abu Dhabi-based MGX. OpenAI was in early talks to raise up to $40 billion in a SoftBank-led funding round that would value the ChatGPT maker at as much as $300 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported last week. Write to Kosaku Narioka at kosaku.narioka@wsj.com

SoftBank forms joint venture with OpenAI in enterprise play

SoftBank Group will spend $3 billion a year to adopt and deploy OpenAI technology throughout its operations, while the two companies have agreed to form a joint venture to market the artificial intelligence as an enterprise solution. "This initiative will not only transform the way SoftBank Group operates but also revolutionize the way companies work in Japan and around the globe," SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said in a statement Monday. The technology, which the company describes as an advanced enterprise AI called Cristal intelligence, will be used at all companies under the SoftBank group, including Arm, Line and PayPay, to improve productivity and drive innovation. For instance, SoftBank's telecom arm plans to make more than 100 million workflows automated, the company said in the press release.

SoftBank Is Betting Billions That OpenAI's Agents Will Automate Work

It's another big swing from an investment firm that's had a lot of high-profile misses. In what could be SoftBank's newest trick to make ungodly amounts of money disappear, the Japanese investment firm will pay $3 billion a year to force companies in its portfolio to experiment with AI agents. SoftBank and OpenAI announced Monday that they were forming a joint venture to develop and market a new product called Cristal Intelligence, which will build off of OpenAI's latest reasoning models to create AI agents that will complete tasks without human intervention. SoftBank said in a press release that it plans to automate over 100 million workflows among its companies, which could include generating financial reports, drafting documents, and managing customer inquiries. "By automating and autonomizing all of its tasks and workflows, SoftBank Corp. will transform its business and services, and create new value," the company said. OpenAI has already launched a preview of its agentic tool Operator for its top-tier subscribers, who pay $200 a month and now have the privilege of not clicking buttons to schedule their own haircuts. The new Cristal Intelligence system will create similar agents, but they'll be trained on corporate customers' data and customized for their systems and needs, SoftBank said. At least initially, it will be marketed exclusively to "major companies in Japan." SoftBank, led by its Chairman Masayoshi Son, built a strong reputation in the tech venture space with early investments in companies like Uber, DoorDash, and Alibaba. But in recent years, its bets have been notably less successful, particularly when it comes to transforming the nature of work. It lost billions on WeWork, for example, and threw $375 million at now-defunct Zume, which promised to automate and disrupt the creation of pizzas. The Cristal Intelligence partnership deepens its financial stake in OpenAI. SoftBank is reportedly in talks to invest $25 billion directly into the company and it has already announced a collaboration called Stargate, another joint venture including OpenAI that plans to spend $500 billion over the next four years to build out AI infrastructure like data centers. The firm's big money bets come amid a lot of hype about the potential of AI agents, but also as as breakthroughs by the Chinese company DeepSeek have raised questions about whether cheaper, more efficient AI developers will undercut OpenAI, which is losing money on its most expensive subscription plan because of the cost of running the technology.

SoftBank seems ready to invest (more) billions in OpenAI

Hype Money: SoftBank is a Japanese investment holding company primarily focused on technology ventures. In the past, the financial giant has backed some of the world's most influential companies, ranging from unprofitable "unicorns" to high-growth tech firms that have delivered substantial returns. More recently, the group has shifted its focus toward artificial intelligence, with a particular interest in U.S.-based OpenAI. According to sources cited by the Financial Times, SoftBank is planning to significantly increase its investment in OpenAI. The AI company, which transitioned from an open-source research initiative to a for-profit business, is now seeking new investors beyond Microsoft's influence. The investment firm led by Masayoshi Son could emerge as the major partner OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been looking for. SoftBank could invest as much as $25 billion in OpenAI, sources say, in addition to its recent involvement in the Stargate project, an initiative focused on building data centers and computing infrastructure in the United States. SoftBank has already announced a $15 billion investment in Donald Trump's ambitious AI project, in which OpenAI is also a participant. Taking all these investments into account, SoftBank's total commitment to AI related ventures could reach approximately $40 billion. Discussions between the two companies are still in the early stages, according to FT, and no formal agreement has been reached yet. If SoftBank commits $15 billion or more, it would become OpenAI's largest single investor. Currently, Microsoft holds the biggest stake in OpenAI, but Altman is actively seeking to reduce the company's dependence on the Redmond-based tech giant. As part of the Stargate initiative, Microsoft has already agreed to relinquish any exclusivity rights to OpenAI's technology. SoftBank's ambitions in the AI sector have been known for years, and CEO Masayoshi Son is a firm believer that AI will revolutionize nearly every industry. Son has been quoted saying that artificial general intelligence (AGI) - AI capable of outperforming humans in nearly all intellectual tasks - could be developed by 2030. Son believes AGI will fundamentally reshape society, however achieving AGI and other cutting-edge AI advancements will require substantial financial investment. Meanwhile, the most recent GenAI development this year has come from China's DeepSeek which could potentially disrupt current industry expectations, alongside Wall Street's most ambitious profit projections. DeepSeek's accomplishment is particularly noteworthy given the company's claim to have trained a model with 671 billion parameters using just 2,048 Nvidia H800 GPUs and $5.6 million, a small fraction of the resources typically required by industry giants like OpenAI and Google. While awaiting SoftBank's potential investment, OpenAI has already secured significant funding in recent years, raising approximately $20 billion. Microsoft has contributed about $13 billion, and SoftBank got its slice of the AI cake by spending $2 billion. Meanwhile, Sam Altman continues working to transition OpenAI into a fully for-profit business - an effort that has drawn criticism, particularly from early backer Elon Musk, who has positioned himself as a challenger to OpenAI's evolving business model.

SoftBank explores investing billions in OpenAI partnership

This story incorporates reporting from The Financial Times, New York Post, The Australian Financial Review, Business Insider, Business Insider and Bloomberg L.P.. SoftBank, the Japanese multinational conglomerate, is in negotiations with OpenAI, the prominent artificial intelligence research and deployment company, to potentially secure a major investment stake. Reports suggest that the investment could range from $15 billion to as much as $40 billion, making SoftBank one of the largest backers of OpenAI. This development comes as SoftBank seeks to expand its influence in the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. This potential investment underscores SoftBank's strategic intent to deepen its involvement in cutting-edge AI technologies. OpenAI, known for developing advanced generative AI models, represents a valuable opportunity for SoftBank to consolidate its position in this burgeoning sector. The exact amount of the investment remains subject to ongoing discussions. The stakes in this potential deal are high, considering OpenAI's growing role in the global AI industry. Founded with a mission to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity, OpenAI has been at the forefront of AI advancements. Its recent breakthroughs in AI models have garnered significant attention and investment interest from technology giants and investors worldwide. While neither SoftBank nor OpenAI have publicly commented on the talks, the prospect of such a large investment highlights the immense value placed on AI innovations. If concluded, this deal would be one of the most substantial investments made in the AI sector. It would likely enhance OpenAI's capacity to further its research and development initiatives. The prospective deal would also align with SoftBank's broader investment strategy, which has historically focused on high-growth sectors, particularly technology. In recent years, AI has become a focal point for global technology investments, and SoftBank's move is consistent with this trend. The conglomerate's Vision Fund has already made significant investments in AI-driven companies across different industries. For OpenAI, securing this investment could provide the necessary capital to scale its operations and explore new AI applications. With increased financial backing, OpenAI could advance its research agenda and invest in the infrastructure required for more robust AI model deployment, potentially accelerating the company's development timelines. This development occurs amid a competitive landscape where several other tech firms are pursuing similar AI advancements. The injection of capital from SoftBank could significantly bolster OpenAI's competitive edge, enabling it to innovate further and stay ahead in the field. This partnership could also foster potential collaborations between OpenAI and other companies within SoftBank's expansive portfolio. If successful, this investment could serve as a cornerstone for future collaborations between two influential entities in technology and AI. The ongoing discussions reflect the broader industry trend where established technology conglomerates are increasingly looking to partner with pioneering AI startups to leverage their technological prowess and creative capabilities. The discussions come at a time when regulatory environments around AI in regions like the U.S., E.U., and beyond are evolving, with growing scrutiny on data privacy, AI ethics, and security concerns. Both SoftBank and OpenAI would have to navigate these regulatory landscapes as they forge their partnership and future strategic directions. As negotiations progress, the potential for a transformative impact on both SoftBank and OpenAI remains significant. A successful deal could redefine productivity, innovation, and growth in AI, shaping the trajectory of the technology sector in the coming years. Analysts and industry stakeholders are closely watching these developments, aware that this could set a new precedent in tech investments.

SoftBank in Talks for Up to $25 Billion Investment in OpenAI

In November last year, OpenAI allowed employees to sell $1.5 billion in shares to SoftBank. SoftBank is reportedly in discussions to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI, which would make it the startup's largest backer. In November last year, OpenAI allowed employees to sell $1.5 billion in shares to SoftBank, as per reports. A CNBC report stated that SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son has been pushing for a larger stake in OpenAI after having previously invested in The Stargate Project - a joint venture with OpenAI. "$40 billion in equity plus MGX? Oracle? Then using the equity to raise debt gets you to $100 billion of dry powder for Stargate's first year. Meta is gunning for 1.3 million GPUs by year-end, and people are seriously talking about an H20 downtick?" Tae Kim, author of the book 'The NVIDIA Way', said. The $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative is backed by tech titans such as Oracle CTO Larry Ellison, SoftBank CEO and The Stargate Project chairman Masayoshi Son, and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. In addition to this, US President Trump secured $3 trillion in investments - a move aimed at shifting the balance of technological dominance away from China and into the US. OpenAI is also shifting to a for-profit model, allowing for greater investment. The company, valued at $157 billion, raised $6.6 billion in October last year to compete with xAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Anthropic. Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has gained traction in the US, topping Apple's App Store and Google Play Store rankings. Its technical paper claims the AI model was built at a fraction of its US rivals. However, experts dispute this. A recent voice in the debate, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, stated in his blog 'On DeepSeek and Export Controls' that Claude 3.5 Sonnet was trained for tens of millions of dollars and developed 9-12 months before DeepSeek's model, disputing claims about DeepSeek's cost efficiency. Amodei noted that DeepSeek's model aligns with the US-based models from 7-10 months earlier and was trained at a lower cost but "not anywhere near the ratios people have suggested". He attributed the cost reduction to the expected annual decrease in AI training costs by four times rather than a technological breakthrough.

SoftBank Reportedly Weighs $25 Billion OpenAI Investment | PYMNTS.com

The news comes days after OpenAI and SoftBank announced they would join Oracle on an AI data center project dubbed "Stargate," with a price tag that could reach as high as $500 billion over the next four years. Sources tell the FT that SoftBank is in talks to invest between $15 billion and $25 billion into OpenAI, in addition to the more than $15 billion it has committed to Stargate. In all, SoftBank could spend upwards of $40 billion on its relationship with OpenAI. SoftBank has said it wants to invest $100 billion into AI infrastructure in the U.S. over the next four years. The company had previously invested $500 million into OpenAI. "The talks are ongoing and the amount that SoftBank could invest in primary equity into OpenAI is a moving target," said one source familiar with the matter. OpenAI also plans to invest about $15 billion in Stargate. Several sources said that SoftBank's equity investment in OpenAI could cover the latter's commitment to Stargate. Speaking with PYMNTS about the project earlier this week, Deborah Perry Piscione, co-founder of the AI/Web3 advisory firm Work3 Institute, said that AI data centers are unique in that they need specialized hardware and infrastructure to deal with the massive parallel processing AI workloads require. "Traditional data centers focus on storage and basic compute, while AI facilities need dense configurations of GPUs and AI accelerators, like Nvidia's H100s, designed specifically for the complex matrix calculations that power AI models," she said. Meanwhile, debate continues in the AI world about the need for massive amounts of investments in AI projects following the debut of a model by Chinese company DeepSeek, which claims to have trained its model for only $5.58 million on 2,048 Nvidia H800 chips. DeepSeek proved that "small companies, individual developers, and even researchers are now able to harness the power of AI without breaking the bank," Roy Benesh, CTO at eSIMple, told PYMNTS earlier this week. Analysts at Bank of America argue that the $5.58 million is "misleading" as DeepSeek did not include factors like research, experiments, architectures, algorithms and data. Still, the analysts said the bigger picture is that the startup introduced innovations demonstrating that less costly training is possible.

SoftBank in talks to invest as much as $25B in OpenAI, report says | TechCrunch

SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI as part of a broader partnership that could see the Japanese conglomerate spend more than $40 billion on AI initiatives with the Microsoft-backed startup, according to Financial Times. The potential investment would make SoftBank OpenAI's largest single backer, the report said, surpassing Microsoft which first invested in the ChatGPT maker in 2019. The deal comes after both companies announced last week they would jointly invest $100 billion in Stargate, a U.S. data center project that could expand to $500 billion over four years. SoftBank plans to invest $15-25 billion directly into OpenAI in addition to its $15 billion Stargate commitment, the report said. OpenAI will invest around $15 billion in Stargate, with SoftBank's equity investment potentially covering OpenAI's infrastructure commitment. The talks come at a time when Chinese firm DeepSeek's release of its R1 reasoning model, which was built on a relatively modest budget, rattled public markets this week. The chip giant Nvidia lost as much as $589 billion in a day before making slight recovery, as investors worried that big investments in expensive AI hardware might not be necessary if companies could achieve similar results with fewer resources. OpenAI claimed earlier this week that it had found evidence that DeepSeek used its proprietary models to train its own open-source competitor through a technique called "distillation," which allows developers to achieve similar results on smaller models at a much lower cost. The company says this would violate its terms of service, which prohibit using outputs to develop competing models. OpenAI's deal with SoftBank, which Financial Times says hasn't finalized, represents SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son's biggest bet since injecting $16 billion into WeWork. It would also reduce OpenAI's dependence on Microsoft for computing resources, with Microsoft recently agreeing to give up its position as OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider. Around 20% of Stargate's funding is expected to be equity, with the remainder financed through debt secured against assets and cash flow, the report said. OpenAI, which reached a $157 billion valuation last year, is also negotiating to become a for-profit company to facilitate additional fundraising.

SoftBank set to invest billions more in Stargate co-partner OpenAI

Japanese investment holding company SoftBank is reportedly in talks to invest between $15 billion (€14.42bn) and $25bn (€24.03bn) in OpenAI, according to the Financial Times, which would be in addition to SoftBank's commitment to The Stargate Project announced recently. This potential deal would make SoftBank OpenAI's largest investor, dethroning Microsoft, which is the start-up's current biggest investor. OpenAI is the producer of the chatbot ChatGPT. Both companies revealed earlier this month that they would be the lead partners for The Stargate Project joint venture, a large data centre project, which is expected to go a long way in helping solidify the US artificial intelligence (AI) industry. Other initial equity funders for this are Emirati investment firm MGX and tech giant Oracle, while key initial technology partners include Microsoft, Arm and Nvidia. OpenAI will have operational responsibility for this venture, with SoftBank having financial responsibility. Mashayoshi Son, the chief executive officer (CEO) of SoftBank will be the chairman of The Stargate Project. The project was announced by US President Donald Trump, dubbing it "the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history." Currently, about $100bn (€96.15bn) will be invested into The Stargate Project, however, this figure is expected to soar to up to approximately $500bn (€480.73bn) in the next four years. SoftBank will be investing over $15bn in Stargate, with OpenAI also likely to invest approximately $15bn in the project. However, the latest investment of up to $25bn, potentially, has not been finalised yet, and could likely cover OpenAI's Stargate share. This is being seen as an ambitious bid by SoftBank to further establish itself as a leading tech and artificial intelligence investor, while also strengthening ties with OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman. SoftBank's CEO, Masayoshi Son, has pointed out that securing a bigger stake in OpenAI could be crucial in furthering his aim of developing superintelligence, a futuristic artificial intelligence theory, which may outpace human cognitive ability. Euronews has contacted SoftBank and OpenAI for comment. Although The Stargate Project is expected to be a landmark US artificial intelligence venture, SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has pointed out concerns about its financial backing, saying that SoftBank did not have the required funds for such an ambitious project. Musk said on Twitter: "SoftBank has well under $10bn secured. I have that on good authority." The Tesla CEO did not provide further details about where this significantly smaller number had come from. However, Sam Altman was quick to refute this statement with another tweet. A previous report by the Financial Times has highlighted other concerns pointed out by people familiar with the project, regarding structure and financing, as Stargate will not be getting any government financial support. There are also increasing worries about the data centre only serving OpenAI once functional, instead of the whole world.

SoftBank May Invest Up To $25B Into OpenAI -- Report

While SoftBank would be OpenAI's largest investor in terms of dollars, Microsoft would still have a larger stake since it invested what is believed to be about $14 billion earlier. The new investment would come after OpenAI reportedly committed $19 billion to the new Stargate Project, an initiative that is anticipated to help build out $100 billion to $500 billion in AI datacenters and infrastructure. That money is in addition to Microsoft's massive investment from January 2023. The news of the potential SoftBank deal comes just days after OpenAI and the entire AI world was thrown for a loop as the Chinese AI app DeepSeek sent shock waves through the industry. DeepSeek, birthed by a China-based hedge fund, claims to have created AI models that rival even those of OpenAI -- but at much lower cost and using less energy.

SoftBank in talks to lead OpenAI funding round at $300 billion valuation, sources say

SoftBank Group is negotiating to lead a $40 billion funding round for AI developer OpenAI, which could value the company at $300 billion. This move comes as competition heats up with Chinese startup DeepSeek's low-cost AI model. The investment is expected to involve convertibles and is contingent on OpenAI restructuring away from its non-profit status.SoftBank Group is in talks to lead a funding round of up to $40 billion in artificial intelligence developer OpenAI at a valuation of $300 billion, including the new funds, sources said, in what could be a record single funding round for a private company. The funding comes as Chinese startup DeepSeek has launched an inexpensive AI model that has caught worldwide attention and challenged expectations of what it costs to develop and deploy AI. Still, SoftBank has valued OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, at $260 billion going into the funding round, up from $150 billion a few months ago, the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters, told Reuters. The funding is expected to come in the form of convertible notes and, similar to OpenAI's last funding round, is conditioned on OpenAI restructuring its business to remove control of the company by its non-profit arm. Leading the funding round in OpenAI would mean a bold bet for SoftBank, the global tech investor and its CEO Masayoshi Son, whose group has about $30 billion in cash to deploy, according to filings. OpenAI and SoftBank declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Thursday that OpenAI was in talks with SoftBank for an investment round to raise nearly $40 billion that would value the AI startup at up to $340 billion. SoftBank could invest $15 billion to $25 billion directly into Microsoft-backed OpenAI, some of which may be used to pay for OpenAI's commitment to Stargate, one of the sources added. Stargate, a joint venture of Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank, plans to invest up to $500 billion to help the U.S. stay ahead of China and other rivals in the global AI race. SoftBank's investment would be on top of the $15 billion it has already committed to Stargate, the person said, adding the talks are at an early stage. In earnings calls this week, the CEOs of Microsoft and Meta Platforms defended their massive AI spending, saying it was crucial to staying competitive in the new field. Microsoft has earmarked $80 billion for AI in its current fiscal year, while Meta has pledged as much as $65 billion. DeepSeek has attracted attention in global AI circles after writing in a paper last month that the training of its model DeepSeek-V3 required less than $6 million worth of computing power from Nvidia H800 chips. DeepSeek has used a common technique called model distillation to build on top of frontier AI models including those from OpenAI, and raised concerns among investors on whether labs such as OpenAI can maintain their edge to generate revenue while facing competition from lower-cost rivals.

SoftBank in talks to lead OpenAI funding round at $300 billion valuation

SoftBank has offered a term sheet that would value OpenAI at a pre-money valuation, meaning the valuation without the funding of the current round, at $260 billion. SoftBank Group is in talks to lead a funding round of up to $40 billion in artificial intelligence developer OpenAI at a valuation of $300 billion, including the new funds, sources said, in what could be a record single funding round for a private company. The funding comes as Chinese startup DeepSeek has launched an inexpensive AI model that has caught worldwide attention and challenged expectations of what it costs to develop and deploy AI. Still, SoftBank has valued OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, at $260 billion going into the funding round, up from $150 billion a few months ago, the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss private matters, told Reuters. The funding is expected to come in the form of convertible notes and, similar to OpenAI's last funding round, is conditioned on OpenAI restructuring its business to remove control of the company by its non-profit arm. Leading the funding round in OpenAI would mean a bold bet for SoftBank, the global tech investor and its CEO Masayoshi Son, whose group has about $30 billion in cash to deploy, according to filings. OpenAI and SoftBank declined to comment. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Thursday that OpenAI was in talks with SoftBank for an investment round to raise nearly $40 billion that would value the AI startup at up to $340 billion. SoftBank could invest $15 billion to $25 billion directly into Microsoft-backed OpenAI, some of which may be used to pay for OpenAI's commitment to Stargate, one of the sources added. Stargate, a joint venture of Oracle, OpenAI and SoftBank, plans to invest up to $500 billion to help the U.S. stay ahead of China and other rivals in the global AI race. SoftBank's investment would be on top of the $15 billion it has already committed to Stargate, the person said, adding the talks are at an early stage. In earnings calls this week, the CEOs of Microsoft and Meta Platforms defended their massive AI spending, saying it was crucial to staying competitive in the new field. Microsoft has earmarked $80 billion for AI in its current fiscal year, while Meta has pledged as much as $65 billion. DeepSeek has attracted attention in global AI circles after writing in a paper last month that the training of its model DeepSeek-V3 required less than $6 million worth of computing power from Nvidia H800 chips. DeepSeek has used a common technique called model distillation to build on top of frontier AI models including those from OpenAI, and raised concerns among investors on whether labs such as OpenAI can maintain their edge to generate revenue while facing competition from lower-cost rivals.

SoftBank in talks to invest $40b in OpenAI

Davos | San Francisco | SoftBank is in talks to invest as much as $US25 billion ($40 billion) into OpenAI, in a deal which would make it the ChatGPT maker's biggest financial backer, as the pair partner on a massive new artificial intelligence infrastructure project. The two companies announced last week they would lead a joint venture that would spend $US100 billion on Stargate - a sprawling data centre project touted by US President Donald Trump - with the figure rising to as much as $US500 billion over the next four years.

OpenAI reportedly set to be valued at more than $300bn

With this new investment, SoftBank is set to usurp Microsoft as OpenAI's biggest backer. OpenAI is reportedly in talks to raise $40bn, taking the nine-year-old start-up to a $340bn valuation. The new funding round would more than double OpenAI's previous valuation just four months ago, when the ChatGPT-maker was pegged at $157bn after a $6.6bn capital raise. SoftBank is set to lead the latest funding round, the Wall Street Journal - who broke the story - reported. While, earlier last week, the Financial Times reported that the Japanese investment firm would be pumping between $15bn to $25bn into OpenAI. With the new multi-billion dollar investment, SoftBank will usurp Microsoft (who has invested $14bn into the AI start-up) as OpenAI's biggest investor. According to CNBC - who pegged the latest valuation at $340bn - a part of the investment could be used by OpenAI for Stargate, a $500bn joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, MGX and SoftBank introduced by US president Donald Trump last week. Meanwhile, SoftBank will commit a separate $15bn to the joint-venture, sources told news outlets. SoftBank was also a leading investor in OpenAI at the company's last funding round in October 2024. The funding round was led by venture capital firm Thrive Capital and included other big name investors such as Nvidia, Fidelity, Khosla Ventures and Microsoft. While Apple reportedly dropped out of the round just days prior. However, OpenAI, which is credited with bringing generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) products to the mainstream, is facing a new competitor from China. DeepSeek has made headlines over the last two weeks with its new R1 reasoning model showcasing capabilities on a par with ChatGPT, while taking a fraction of its cost to train its model. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who praised DeepSeek for its "impressive" and cheap reasoning model, has since gone on the offensive, accusing the Chinese start-up of using OpenAI's models to train R1. Earlier this week, OpenAI claimed to have evidence that DeepSeek 'distilled' or leveraged outputs ChatGPT, into its smaller model, reducing costs and latency. Meanwhile, Microsoft has joined in with OpenAI's investigation to look into whether DeepSeek obtained the start-up's technology in an unauthorised manner. Recently, OpenAI launched a preview of its Operator AI agent, a model which can interact with a webpage independently. According to the company, Operator can handle a variety of "repetitive browser tasks", such as filling out forms, ordering groceries and even creating memes. Don't miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic's digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.

OpenAI in talks to raise funding that would value AI startup at up to $340 billion

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks next to SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son after U.S. President Donald Trump delivered remarks on AI infrastructure at the Roosevelt room at White House in Washington, U.S., January 21, 2025. OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $40 billion in a funding round that would lift the artificial intelligence company's valuation to as high as $340 billion, CNBC has confirmed. Masayoshi Son's SoftBank would lead the round, contributing between $15 billion and 25 billion, according to two people familiar with the negotiations who asked not to be named because the talks are ongoing. SoftBank would surpass Microsoft as OpenAI's top backer. The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the talks. Part of the funding may be used for OpenAI's commitment to Stargate, a joint venture between SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle that was introduced by President Donald Trump last week, the sources said. The plan calls for billions of dollars to be invested in U.S. AI infrastructure. OpenAI was last valued at $157 billion valuation by private investors. In late 2022, the company launched its ChatGPT chatbot and kicked off the boom in generative AI. OpenAI closed its latest $6.6 billion round in October, gearing up to aggressively compete with Elon Musk's xAI as well as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Anthropic. Meanwhile, Chinese startup lab DeepSeek is blowing up in the U.S, presenting fresh competition to OpenAI. DeepSeek saw its app soar to the top of Apple's App Store rankings this week and roiled U.S. markets on reports that its powerful model was trained at a fraction of the cost of U.S. competitors. At an event in Washington, D.C., on Thursday hosted by OpenAI, CEO Sam Altman said DeepSeek is "clearly a great model." "This is a reminder of the level of competition and the need for democratic Al to win," he said. He said it also points to the "level of interest in reasoning, the level of interest in open source."

OpenAI seeking $40 billion in new fundraising round: Report

Japan's SoftBank is leading the investment round and is in talks to invest $15-25 billion in the deal that would make it the ChatGPT-maker's biggest financial backer. The reports came after Chinese startup DeepSeek sparked panic this week with a powerful new chatbot developed at a fraction of the cost of its US competitors, dealing a blow to markets.OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is seeking to raise $40 billion in a fresh round of funding that would value the startup at a staggering $340 billion, the Wall Street Journal Reported on Thursday. Japan's SoftBank is leading the investment round and is in talks to invest $15-25 billion in the deal that would make it the ChatGPT-maker's biggest financial backer. The reports came after Chinese startup DeepSeek sparked panic this week with a powerful new chatbot developed at a fraction of the cost of its US competitors, dealing a blow to markets. The Softbank investment was first reported by the Financial Times. The investment plan comes just three months after OpenAI closed its previous funding round that valued the company at $157 billion. Doubling its valuation would be unprecedented in Silicon Valley history and signals the vast sums needed to build world-leading AI models from scratch, much of it on cutting-edge computing and infrastructure. SoftBank and OpenAI are part of the Stargate drive announced by US President Donald Trump to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The new funds would partly go to help OpenAI fulfill its roughly $18 billion commitment to Stargate, the Journal said. The Japanese firm's mooted investment would come on top of its commitment of more than $15 billion to Stargate, the FT said, citing people with direct knowledge of the negotiations. "Ultimately, the Japanese company could spend more than $40bn on its partnership with OpenAI," the report said. SoftBank was not immediately available for comment when contacted by AFP. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shares in Softbank rose three percent in Tokyo trading on Thursday. The company, founded by Japanese tycoon Masayoshi Son, made spectacularly successful early bets on Yahoo! and Alibaba in the 1990s but some of its other investments have bombed. Securing huge funding from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and others, Son -- an early backer of Trump -- has sought to pivot into AI, helped by SoftBank's stake in chip designer Arm. Elon Musk has openly poured scorn on Stargate, saying on X this month that the main investors "don't actually have the money". The world's richest man was an early investor in OpenAI and has long been in a feud with its founder Sam Altman, who called the Tesla founder's comments "wrong".

OpenAI seeking $40 billion in new fundraising round: Report

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is seeking to raise $40 billion in a fresh round of funding that would value the startup at a staggering $340 billion, the Wall Street Journal Reported on Thursday. Japan's SoftBank is leading the investment round and is in talks to invest $15-25 billion in the deal that would make it the ChatGPT-maker's biggest financial backer. The reports came after Chinese startup DeepSeek sparked panic this week with a powerful new chatbot developed at a fraction of the cost of its US competitors, dealing a blow to markets. The Softbank investment was first reported by the Financial Times. The investment plan comes just three months after OpenAI closed its previous funding round that valued the company at $157 billion. Doubling its valuation would be unprecedented in Silicon Valley history and signals the vast sums needed to build world-leading AI models from scratch, much of it on cutting-edge computing and infrastructure. SoftBank and OpenAI are part of the Stargate drive announced by US President Donald Trump to invest up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The new funds would partly go to help OpenAI fulfill its roughly $18 billion commitment to Stargate, the Journal said. The Japanese firm's mooted investment would come on top of its commitment of more than $15 billion to Stargate, the FT said, citing people with direct knowledge of the negotiations. "Ultimately, the Japanese company could spend more than $40bn on its partnership with OpenAI," the report said. SoftBank was not immediately available for comment when contacted by AFP. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shares in Softbank rose three percent in Tokyo trading on Thursday. The company, founded by Japanese tycoon Masayoshi Son, made spectacularly successful early bets on Yahoo! and Alibaba in the 1990s but some of its other investments have bombed. Securing huge funding from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and others, Son -- an early backer of Trump -- has sought to pivot into AI, helped by SoftBank's stake in chip designer Arm. Elon Musk has openly poured scorn on Stargate, saying on X this month that the main investors "don't actually have the money". The world's richest man was an early investor in OpenAI and has long been in a feud with its founder Sam Altman, who called the Tesla founder's comments "wrong".

OpenAI seeking USD40 billion in new fundraising round: report

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is seeking to raise USD40 billion in a fresh round of funding that would value the startup at a staggering USD340 billion, the Wall Street Journal Reported on Thursday. Japan's SoftBank is leading the investment round and is in talks to invest USD15-25 billion in the deal that would make it the ChatGPT-maker's biggest financial backer. The reports came after Chinese startup DeepSeek sparked panic this week with a powerful new chatbot developed at a fraction of the cost of its US competitors, dealing a blow to markets. The Softbank investment was first reported by the Financial Times. The investment plan comes just three months after OpenAI closed its previous funding round that valued the company at USD157 billion. Doubling its valuation would be unprecedented in Silicon Valley history and signals the vast sums needed to build world-leading AI models from scratch, much of it on cutting-edge computing and infrastructure. SoftBank and OpenAI are part of the Stargate drive announced by US President Donald Trump to invest up to USD500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States. The new funds would partly go to help OpenAI fulfill its roughly USD18 billion commitment to Stargate, the Journal said. The Japanese firm's mooted investment would come on top of its commitment of more than USD15 billion to Stargate, the FT said, citing people with direct knowledge of the negotiations. "Ultimately, the Japanese company could spend more than USD40bn on its partnership with OpenAI," the report said. SoftBank was not immediately available for comment when contacted by AFP. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Shares in Softbank rose three percent in Tokyo trading on Thursday. The company, founded by Japanese tycoon Masayoshi Son, made spectacularly successful early bets on Yahoo! and Alibaba in the 1990s but some of its other investments have bombed. Securing huge funding from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and others, Son -- an early backer of Trump -- has sought to pivot into AI, helped by SoftBank's stake in chip designer Arm. Elon Musk has openly poured scorn on Stargate, saying on X this month that the main investors "don't actually have the money". The world's richest man was an early investor in OpenAI and has long been in a feud with its founder Sam Altman, who called the Tesla founder's comments "wrong".

OpenAI targets $300bn valuation in SoftBank-led funding round

OpenAI is in talks with investors including SoftBank to raise about $40bn in a massive new funding round, which would push the ChatGPT-maker's valuation to $300bn. SoftBank is set to invest between $15bn and $25bn into OpenAI, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. That investment will be the centrepiece of a wider funding round which could lead to the artificial intelligence company raising as much as $40bn, said two people with knowledge of the negotiations. OpenAI's valuation is expected to jump to $300bn, including the new investment, said two people with knowledge of the talks. A figure has not been finalised for the deal, they added. OpenAI has morphed from a research-focused start-up to a commercial juggernaut since it released ChatGPT in late 2022. The San Francisco-based company in October raised $6.6bn at a valuation of $157bn. That deal made it one of the most highly valued private start-ups in the world. The valuation and unprecedented size of the latest round suggest investor willingness to back the top US AI start-ups has not been undermined by China's DeepSeek, which claims to provide high-level performance at a much lower cost than rivals. OpenAI and its closest competitors have maintained that super-powerful AI systems still require vast amounts of capital and infrastructure to develop and deploy at scale. A tranche of the investment from the funding round will be used to cover OpenAI's commitment of at least $15bn to fund Stargate, a major new data centre project the company announced last week with SoftBank, Oracle and Abu Dhabi state fund MGX. Stargate has committed to build $100bn of new AI infrastructure, rising to as mush as $500bn over the next four years. OpenAI will be the project's sole customer. OpenAI's funding talks, details of which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, are at an early stage and the numbers may change, added the people familiar with the deal. The new funding round could put the company within touching distance of Elon Musk's $350bn SpaceX, the most valuable start-up in the world. OpenAI and a handful of competitors are racing to build artificial general intelligence, which are AI machines capable of matching or outperforming humans on a wide range of cognitive tasks. They argue that achieving that level of intelligence requires huge investment -- in chips and computing power to train and run cutting-edge models, as well as spending to hire top engineers and researchers. Rival start-ups Anthropic and Musk's xAI have raised more than $10bn each, and are competing with some of the world's best-resourced Big Tech groups including Google and Meta. OpenAI's funding round is set to be by far the largest for a US AI start-up to date.

Report: OpenAI Aims to Raise $40 Billion in New Funding Round | PYMNTS.com

OpenAI is reportedly in talks for a $40 billion funding round that would value it at $300 billion. The round would be led by SoftBank, which would invest between $15 billion and $25 billion, with the rest coming from other investors, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Thursday (Jan. 30), citing unnamed sources. Some of the capital raised in the round would go toward the $18 billion OpenAI has committed to contribute to the Stargate AI infrastructure joint venture, which also includes SoftBank, according to the report. The funding would also support OpenAI's money-losing business operations, per the report. OpenAI did not immediately reply to PYMNTS' request for comment. The Financial Times (FT) reported Thursday that SoftBank is in discussions to invest between $15 billion and $25 billion in OpenAI. The investment could bring the amount SoftBank has invested in its relationship with OpenAI to $40 billion and would make the Japanese conglomerate OpenAI's largest investor, overtaking Microsoft. A valuation of $300 billion would make OpenAI the world's second-most valuable startup, behind Elon Musk's SpaceX, and would double the valuation OpenAI achieved when it raised $6.6 billion in October, according to the WSJ report. This news came days after tech stocks plunged after China's DeepSeek launched a new AI model that reportedly sowed doubts about the United States' ability to maintain its position as AI leader by spending billions on chips. The new DeepSeek model achieved comparable performance to those of OpenAI and Meta but reportedly claims to use substantially fewer Nvidia chips. The model also supplanted OpenAI's ChatGPT as the most popular free app on the Apple App Store. The news of a potential new funding round also comes about a week after President Donald Trump announced Stargate, an up-to-$500 billion project that aims to build big AI-focused data centers in the U.S. Equity partners in Stargate are SoftBank, OpenAI, Oracle and MGX, an AI-focused sovereign wealth fund in Dubai. OpenAI co-leads the venture with SoftBank and will have operational responsibility for the project. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son will chair Stargate. Oracle, Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI will be the project's initial technology partners.

Report: OpenAI could double valuation to $340B with new $40B funding round - SiliconANGLE

Report: OpenAI could double valuation to $340B with new $40B funding round OpenAI is seeking to raise up to $40 billion in new funding at a valuation of $340 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported today. SoftBank Group Corp. is expected to lead the investment. The Japanese tech conglomerate could reportedly commit between $15 billion and $25 billion. According to the Journal, it's also helping the ChatGPT developer find other investors who may be interested in joining the deal. The report comes three months after SoftBank backed a $6.6 billion funding round for OpenAI at a $157 billion valuation. That the former company is reportedly seeking to invest again at a significantly higher valuation suggests it's optimistic about OpenAI's growth prospects. Last September, the New York Times reported that the ChatGPT developer was on track to end 2024 with $3.7 billion in revenue and was expecting to reach $100 billion by 2029. But while OpenAI's top line is growing rapidly, it's currently unprofitable. The Wall Street Journal reported that a portion of the new capital the company is raising will be used to finance its loss-making business operations. The round will also be used to fund Project Stargate, an infrastructure initiative that OpenAI announced last week at the White House. The company plans to team up with SoftBank, Oracle Corp. and investment firm MGX to build a network of artificial intelligence data centers in the U.S. The project is expected to cost as much as $500 billion. OpenAI and SoftBank have each committed about $19 billion to the initiative, The Information reported last week. Sources told the Financial Times that the companies plan to cover the rest of the AI data centers' cost by raising funding from "existing investors" as well as debt financing. Earlier this month, Chinese AI lab DeepSeek open-sourced a large language model called R1. The algorithm achieved performance comparable to OpenAI's reasoning-optimized o1 LLM across several benchmarks. The $40 billion that OpenAI is raising could put it in a better position to address competition from DeepSeek and other rivals. The release of R1 suggests it might be possible for startups with significantly smaller budgets to match OpenAI's frontier models. In an academic paper, DeepSeek researchers detailed that they trained R1 using $5.6 million worth of graphics card hours. That's a fraction of what OpenAI is believed to have spent on its LLMs. Following R1's release, OpenAI pledged to "deliver much better models" in the future. The company's rumored funding round should make it easier to achieve that goal. If it materializes, the investment will also give OpenAI more time to find ways of providing its AI services at a profit.

OpenAI Asking for Tens of Billions in New Investment to "Fund Its Money-Losing business Operations"

After getting epically roasted by an upstart competitor, OpenAI is seemingly refusing to reevaluate its approach, asking investors to close their eyes and give them another $40 billion anyway, pretty please. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the Sam Altman-led company is in early talks for a new round of funding that would value it at a gargantuan $340 billion -- which would put it among the 30 biggest companies in the world by market cap, not to mention more than twice the $157 billion it was valued at in October. Despite its sky-high valuation, it bears repeating that OpenAI isn't expected to make virtually any profit until 2029, at the very earliest -- and even that's a highly optimistic read of the situation, given the many shortcomings still plaguing the tech. For evidence, look no further than the WSJ's diplomatic phrasing: the "startup also expects to use the cash to fund its money-losing business operations." OpenAI is looking to raise funds at least in part to fulfill its promise of committing roughly $18 billion to president Donald Trump's shiny AI infrastructure initiative. The project, dubbed Stargate, is aiming to raise as much as half a trillion dollars in a matter of four years -- plans that were met with plenty of skepticism. Fellow Stargate signee SoftBank is said to lead OpenAI's latest round of funding, contributing anywhere from $15 to $25 billion, according to the WSJ. The timing of the latest revelation is striking, to say the least. Earlier this week, a new hyper-efficient model by Chinese AI startup DeepSeek flipped the entire AI industry on its head, triggering a massive tech selloff that wiped out over $1 trillion in market capitalization. The company's latest "reasoning" AI model, dubbed R1, caught investors by surprise, demonstrating that the proficiency of OpenAI's most powerful models can be matched at a tiny fraction of the cost. DeepSeek's efforts clearly challenged OpenAI's modus operandi, demonstrating that stuffing as many billions of dollars as possible into massive data centers for extremely power-hungry models may not be the most economically savvy approach. Is the latest round of funding yet another warning sign of staggering bloat suffocating the AI industry and limiting innovation? Investors are bound to have a very close look before committing even more cash, following this week's immense financial and logistical reality check. It certainly wouldn't be the first major misstep for SoftBank. The company has a troubled history with past investments -- remember WeWork? -- posting a record $32 billion loss for its Vision Fund in 2023, for instance. In short, OpenAI just doubled its already lofty stack of chips, vowing to go all in. Altman has promised that OpenAI will "obviously deliver much better models" than DeepSeek, without giving any more details. "But mostly we are excited to continue to execute on our research roadmap and believe more compute is more important now than ever before to succeed at our mission," he added in a Monday tweet. Put differently, Altman is fully committed to pumping as much money into AI datacenter infrastructure as possible -- efficiency, environment, and economic edge be damned. "The world is going to want to use a LOT of AI, and really be quite amazed by the next-gen models coming," he wrote.

OpenAI in talks for investment round valuing it up to $340 billion, WSJ reports

(Reuters) -OpenAI is in talks for an investment round to raise nearly $40 billion that would value the AI startup at up to $340 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the report. SoftBank could invest $15 billion to $25 billion directly into Microsoft-backed OpenAI, some of which may be used to pay for OpenAI's commitment to Stargate, Reuters had reported on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. Stargate, a joint venture by Oracle , OpenAI and SoftBank, plans to invest up to $500 billion to help the U.S. stay ahead of China and other rivals in the global AI race. SoftBank's investment would be on top of the $15 billion it has already committed to Stargate, the person had said, adding the talks are at an early stage. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was valued at $157 billion in its last funding round, cementing its status as one of the most valuable private companies in the world. (Reporting by Arsheeya Bajwa in Bengaluru and Juby Babu in Mexico City; Editing by Maju Samuel)

OpenAI said to be in talks to raise $40B at a $340B valuation | TechCrunch

OpenAI may have billions of dollars in the bank. But it's gearing up to raise billions more, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal. Per The WSJ, OpenAI is in talks to secure up to $40 billion in a funding round that would value the startup at $340 billion. SoftBank would lead the round, pouring between $15 billion to $25 billion into the ChatGPT maker, according to The WSJ. Should OpenAI successfully close the round, it'd be a remarkable feat for the startup, which was valued at $157 billion in October. The WSJ says that OpenAI would use the capital to fund its money-losing business operations and fulfill its commitment to Stargate, its ambitious project to build AI data centers across the U.S. In 2024, OpenAI reportedly lost around $5 billion against revenues of $3.7 billion. The losses could mount. In conjunction with partners including SoftBank, OpenAI aims to contribute billions of dollars to Stargate to start.