SoftBank is in discussions to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI, potentially making it the startup’s largest financial backer.
A source familiar with the negotiations, who wished to remain anonymous due to the confidentiality of the talks, provided this confirmation. The Financial Times was the first to report on SoftBank’s potential investment.
In November, OpenAI allowed employees to sell approximately $1.5 billion worth of shares to SoftBank. Masayoshi Son, the founder of SoftBank, was keen on acquiring a larger stake in OpenAI following his previous investment of $500 million in the company’s last funding round.
SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle have formed a collaborative venture known as Stargate, which was recently announced at the White House by President Donald Trump. The initiative plans to allocate billions of dollars towards improving artificial intelligence infrastructure within the United States.
OpenAI, traditionally backed by Microsoft, is transitioning towards a for-profit model. Originally established as a nonprofit in 2015, OpenAI is now establishing a public benefit corporation to manage its commercial activities. This allows OpenAI to operate more like a high-growth startup, necessitating increased capital and computational resources to compete in the generative AI sector—a market projected to reach $1 trillion within a decade.
OpenAI has been valued at $157 billion by private investors. The company launched its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, which sparked a surge in generative AI interest. OpenAI completed its latest $6.6 billion funding round in October, positioning itself to compete aggressively with Elon Musk’s xAI as well as Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Anthropic.
Meanwhile, DeepSeek, a Chinese AI startup, has gained significant attention in the U.S. Its app recently topped Apple’s App Store rankings, causing turbulence in U.S. markets due to reports that its powerful model was developed at a fraction of the cost compared to U.S. competitors.