Japan’s SoftBank will invest $40 billion in OpenAI, according to press reports. The deal is the second between the partners in one week and is based on a $260 billion valuation of OpenAI.
SoftBank has now displaced Microsoft as OpenAI’s biggest investor. SoftBank will provide the funding over the next one to two years, beginning this spring, CNBC reported on Feb. 7. SoftBank will bring other investors in on a limited basis to provide up to $10 billion of the funding, subject to OpenAI approval, the Financial Times reported.
SoftBank already had a deal for OpenAI’s services
Talks had been underway for a while. It was reported at the end of January that SoftBank was considering the investment.
The sides announced on Feb. 3 that SoftBank would pay $3 billion annually for access to a suite of OpenAI products for the bank and its subsidiaries, including British chip maker Arm, which SoftBank acquired in 2016. The SoftBank tech package will be called Cristal Intelligence.
Some of the funds from the current deal will go to Stargate, the $500 billion joint venture that will create new AI infrastructure in the United States. That project was announced in January and will be funded by OpenAI, SoftBank, Oracle, and the Abu Dhabi state fund MGX. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son is already slated to become the chairman of the organization.
SoftBank is increasing activity in the AI sector
Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and OpenAI will partner on the technology developed for Stargate. Oracle has begun hiring personnel for the first Stargate site, slated to be built in Abilene, Texas.
Softbank has already invested in Apple, Qualcomm, and Alibaba, as well as OpenAI. In November, SoftBank and OpenAI struck a deal that allowed OpenAI employees to sell $1.5 billion worth of their OpenAI shares to the Japanese bank.
The bank’s CEO Son met with Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in December and announced the company’s intention to invest $100 billion in the United States and create 100,000 jobs in AI and related sectors.
SoftBank made a $50 million investment in Texas-based crypto miner Cipher Mining that was announced on Jan. 30. On Feb. 5, the bank was reported to be in the final stage of negotiations to buy Oracle-backed chip designer Ampere Computing.
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