This news follows a recent stir caused by the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which unveiled a new chatbot that was developed at a much lower cost than its American rivals, causing some market jitters.
Both SoftBank and OpenAI are involved in the Stargate initiative, a project announced by former President Donald Trump aimed at investing up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.S.
The potential investment from SoftBank would be in addition to its previous commitment of over $15 billion to the Stargate project, as reported by the FT, citing sources familiar with the talks.
“Ultimately, the Japanese company could spend more than $40bn on its partnership with OpenAI,” the report said.
OpenAI is set to pour $15 billion into Stargate, and it looks like SoftBank’s investment in the US company might just cover its share of the AI infrastructure project, according to the Financial Times.
SoftBank didn’t respond right away when AFP reached out for a comment. Meanwhile, their shares dipped by one percent during Thursday morning trading in Tokyo.
Founded by Japanese billionaire Masayoshi Son, SoftBank had some major wins with early investments in Yahoo! and Alibaba back in the '90s, but not all of their bets have paid off.
With significant backing from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and others, Son—who was an early supporter of Trump—is now trying to shift focus towards AI, especially with SoftBank’s stake in chip maker 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”.