[NEWS] SoftBank Group in Talks for Additional Investment of up to $25 billion in OpenAI

SoftBank Group has been revealed to be considering a significant investment in U.S.-based OpenAI. According to reports, the investment amount could range from $15 billion to a maximum of $25 billion. If realized, this would make SoftBank one of the largest investors in OpenAI, highlighting its potential role as a key player in the AI industry.

The Trump administration has rolled back AI-related regulations established under the Biden administration to accelerate AI development. The goal is to create an environment where U.S. companies can rapidly advance AI technology.

In December last year, during a joint press conference between President Donald Trump and SoftBank Group Chairman Masayoshi Son, Son expressed his intention to invest approximately $100 billion. However, President Trump requested that the investment be doubled to $200 billion, emphasizing the need for SoftBank to play a crucial role in accelerating AI development.

Following this, the "Stargate" joint investment initiative was established to execute a large-scale private investment plan aimed at developing AI infrastructure. This initiative underscores the U.S.'s commitment to creating an environment where AI can be rapidly developed.

According to Son, Stargate, formed by SoftBank Group, OpenAI, and Oracle, will immediately invest $100 billionto establish AI infrastructure, including data centers and research campuses. Over the next four years, the total AI project investment will increase to at least $500 billion, leveraging each company's strengths to drive AI innovation forward.

As we look globally, the rapid growth of China-based AI company DeepSeek is emerging as a significant threat to OpenAI.

DeepSeek utilizes an architecture known as "MoE (Mixture-of-Experts)," which enhances computational efficiency by activating only the necessary parameters. This allows the company to claim that it can operate at significantly lower costs compared to OpenAI’s models.

Specifically, DeepSeek is said to achieve performance comparable to OpenAI’s models while reducing training costs by approximately 90%.

On the other hand, OpenAI relies on a densely structured transformer model trained on large-scale datasets, requiring immense computational resources. OpenAI’s models excel in general-purpose tasks, particularly in creative content generation and solving complex problems.

DeepSeek’s low-cost strategy has also impacted the stock price of NVIDIA, the leading U.S. semiconductor company specializing in GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) development and manufacturing, further accelerating competition in the AI market.

Through Stargate, SoftBank Group aims to strengthen its partnership with OpenAI to secure leadership in the AI sector. The future of U.S. AI dominance may well hinge on whether it can maintain its technological leadership.

Reference: Bloomberg
Image: Shutterstock

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