SoftBank in talks for up to $30 billion more investment in OpenAI

SoftBank Group is in discussions to invest up to an additional $30 billion in OpenAI, according to a person familiar with the matter, underscoring the Japanese conglomerate’s growing commitment to the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT.

The potential investment would form part of a broader funding round that could raise as much as $100 billion for OpenAI, valuing the company at around $830 billion, the source said. The information has not been publicly disclosed.

SoftBank has been increasing its exposure to OpenAI as chief executive Masayoshi Son positions the group more aggressively in the global AI race. In December, SoftBank said it had completed a $41 billion investment in OpenAI, securing an 11% stake.

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OpenAI has been facing rising costs associated with training and operating large-scale AI models, while competition from rivals such as Google continues to intensify.

The report was first published by The Wall Street Journal. SoftBank declined to comment on the discussions. Its shares rose about 3.5% in Tokyo morning trading.

Both SoftBank and OpenAI are also backers of Stargate, a $500 billion initiative aimed at building AI data centre infrastructure for training and inference, a project executives have described as strategically important to maintaining US leadership in artificial intelligence.

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