Move reported by the FT would make Japanese group the largest financial backer of US startup behind ChatGPT. The Japanese investment group SoftBank is reportedly in talks to invest up to $25bn (£20bn) in OpenAI in a deal that would make it the biggest financial backer of the startup behind ChatGPT.
The lender is considering putting a sum of between $15bn and $25bn into the San Francisco-based company, according to the Financial Times. SoftBank, whose other investments include TikTok parent ByteDance and British chip designer Arm, is already an investor in OpenAI and recently backed a funding round that valued the company at $157bn. Microsoft, currently OpenAI’s biggest shareholder, also joined that round.
Last week OpenAI and SoftBank teamed up with Oracle to form Stargate, which Donald Trump called “the largest AI infrastructure project in history”. The partnership aims to build data centres for AI systems, with an initial spend of $100bn. Citing multiple sources with knowledge of the talks, the FT said SoftBank’s equity investment would cover the Japanese company’s commitment to Stargate. Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and an influential figure in the Trump administration, has claimed Stargate’s backers “don’t actually have the money”.
OpenAI’s chief executive, Sam Altman, replied on Musk’s social media platform, X, that the funding claims were wrong: “This is great for the country. I realize what is great for the country isn’t always what’s optimal for your companies, but in your new role I hope you’ll mostly put US first.”.
