SoftBank is ready to invest (more than) billions of dollars in OpenAI

SoftBank: SoftBank, a Japanese investment holding firm, is primarily focused on tech ventures. The financial giant has in the past backed some of world’s most influential firms, from unprofitable “unicorns” up to high-growth tech companies that have delivered substantial return. Recently, the group’s focus has shifted to artificial intelligence with a special interest in OpenAI, based in the United States. SoftBank plans to increase its investment in OpenAI, according to sources cited by Financial Times. The AI company is looking for new investors to replace Microsoft, after it transitioned from an open-source project to a business. Masayoshi son’s investment firm could be the major partner OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is looking for. Sources say that SoftBank could invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI in addition to their recent involvement in Stargate, an initiative aimed at building data centers and computing equipment in the United States. SoftBank announced a $15 Billion investment in Donald Trump’s ambitious AI project. OpenAI is also involved. SoftBank’s commitment to AI-related ventures could total $40 billion if you include all of these investments. According to FT, the discussions between the two companies have not yet reached a formal agreement. SoftBank would become OpenAI’s largest investor if it committed $15 billion or more. Altman is actively working to reduce OpenAI’s dependency on Microsoft, the Redmond-based tech company. Microsoft has already agreed, as part of its Stargate initiative to relinquish all exclusivity rights for OpenAI’s technologies.

Son was quoted as saying that artificial general intellect (AGI), AI capable of outperforming human in nearly every intellectual task, could be developed by the year 2030. Son believes AGI is going to fundamentally reshape the society. However, achieving AGI as well as other cutting-edge AI advances will require substantial investment.

The most recent GenAI development in this year comes from China’s DeepSeek, which could potentially disrupt industry expectations and Wall Street’s most optimistic profit projections. DeepSeek’s achievement is especially noteworthy, given that the company claims to have trained a 671 billion parameter model using only 2,048 Nvidia GPUs and $5.6 Million. This is a fraction of the resources required by industry giants such as OpenAI and Google.

OpenAI, while awaiting SoftBank’s potential investment has already raised significant funding in the last few years, raising about $20 billion. Microsoft contributed $13 billion and SoftBank spent $2 billion to get its share of the AI pie. Sam Altman is working to transform OpenAI into a for-profit company. This effort has been criticized, especially by Elon Musk who has positioned himself to be a competitor to OpenAI’s changing business model.