SoftBank has reportedly agreed to a $40 billion stake for OpenAI, pushing its valuation up to $300 billion. If this sounds huge, it is. SoftBank’s planned investment dwarfs Microsoft’s $13 billion investment in OpenAI, an alliance that has already drawn antitrust scrutiny. CNBC was the first to revealthat the SoftBank investment, which has yet to be closed, would start paying out in the spring and continue for the next one or two years. OpenAI’s Stargate Project, which aims at building advanced AI infrastructure and has a price tag of ahref=””https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/22/openai_stargate_ai_datacenter_company/””target=””_blank” “>$500 is expected to receive a portion of the funding. If this project is successful, it would not be SoftBank’s first OpenAI announcement for February, even though we are only a week in.
On February 3, the two announced their partnership to develop and promote an enterprise AI, which they called “Cristal intelligence” that SoftBank claimed would “securely integrate the systems and data” businesses in a customized manner for each deployment. SoftBank wants Cristal to be the first to test these new systems. The Japanese firm announced Monday that it has
“SoftBank Group Corp. will spend $3 billion US annually to deploy OpenAI’s solutions across its group companies, making it the first company in the world to integrate Cristal intelligence at scale,” . SoftBank and OpenAI formed a joint-venture called “SB OpenAI Japan” as part of the deal to market Cristal among major Japanese companies. OpenAI and Microsoft urge the judge to throw out Musk’s fact-free lawsuit
Oh, and the partnership also ensures SoftBank and its group companies – including Arm – “will be granted priority access in Japan to the latest and most-advanced models developed by OpenAI.” SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has been frothing-at-the-mouth bullish on AI, predicting last year that an artificial superintelligence 10,000 times smarter than a human brain would arrive within the next decade – if enough investment flows in.
Where does this leave Microsoft then? It seems that Microsoft is playing second fiddle to OpenAI in courting. Redmond
labeled Altman’s outfit as a competitor in their 2024 annual report. They noted that OpenAI products are competitive with its own AI offerings, even though many of these Microsoft-branded tools use OpenAI models. The software giant is said to have taken steps to change this, while promoting its evolving and close relationship.
SoftBank and OpenAI have confirmed the new investment. Microsoft has been contacted to find out if it was hurt by this, but we have not heard back. (r)
