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Softbank plans to invest up to $25 billion into OpenAI, surpassing Microsoft

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Japanese investment company Softbank is planning to invest between $15 billion and $25 billion into OpenAI. If the deal goes through, it would make Softbank the largest investor in OpenAI, taking over from Microsoft.

The investment would be different from the money OpenAI and Softbank are already committing to the Stargate project. For starters, the Stargate project was announced by President Donald Trump along with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Oracle's Larry Ellison. As part of the project, OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and investment firm MGX would invest $500 billion over the next four years to build new AI infrastructure in the United States, including data centers.

With DeepSeek making headlines for being able to pull off its R1 reasoning model at a fraction of the price, compared to OpenAI, and wiping out U.S. markets, there have been concerns about whether the U.S. can still protect its dominant position in the AI race with China. Recently, Microsoft and OpenAI started an investigation into whether DeepSeek trained its models by stealing their proprietary data.

This isn't the first time Softbank is keen to invest in OpenAI. The Japanese investment firm already has a $1.5 billion investment in the AI company. Softbank founder and CEO, Masayoshi Son, has been long interested in investing in technology and AI, despite facing challenges in the past with his other investments. The investment firm got some of its financial strength back after a successful IPO of ARM Holdings, the chipmaking company, although it still owns the majority of the stake in it,

The last time OpenAI was funded, it was valued at $157 billion in 2024, while it raised $6.6 billion from various sources and Microsoft's investment rose to $13 billion. However, Altman has been trying to explore ways to lessen OpenAI's dependency on Microsoft for computing resources, by partnering up with Oracle. The Stargate project will further help OpenAI to scale its infrastructure without heavily relying on Microsoft.

via Financial Times

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