Tokyo (AFP) – Japanese tech investor SoftBank said Wednesday that its stake in OpenAI is now around 11 percent after completing the second stage of a $41-billion investment in the maker of ChatGPT. Having made colossal profits as well as losses on previous investments, flamboyant founder Masayoshi Son has pivoted SoftBank towards artificial intelligence (AI).
SoftBank had announced in April its planned investment of up to $40 billion in OpenAI, and on Wednesday it said that the second tranche of $22.5 billion was completed. The final investment reached $41 billion and includes $30 billion from SoftBank’s Vision Fund plus $11 billion from other third-party co-investors, it said.
“We are deeply aligned with OpenAI’s vision of ensuring AGI benefits all of humanity,” Son, 68, said in a statement. AGI refers to artificial general intelligence, the mooted next stage of AI when computers could outperform humans in different tasks.
“SoftBank saw the potential of AI early and committed with a deep belief in its impact on humanity,” said OpenAI chief Sam Altman. “Their global leadership and scale help us move faster and bring advanced intelligence to the world,” Altman said in the joint statement.
SoftBank and OpenAI, with Oracle, are also leading the $500-billion Stargate project to build AI infrastructure in the United States announced by President Donald Trump in January 2025. SoftBank also announced this week that it is buying US data centre investor DigitalBridge in a deal worth around $4 billion.
© 2024 AFP
