SoftBank is significantly increasing its investment in generative AI, spearheaded by a substantial commitment to OpenAI. In April 2025, SoftBank led a $40 billion funding round for OpenAI, valuing the company at $300 billion. This investment aims to propel AI research, scale compute infrastructure, and enhance tools like ChatGPT, which has 500 million weekly users.
Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's CEO, envisions AI as a transformative force and has established a joint venture with OpenAI to offer advanced AI solutions to businesses. This venture, called Cristal intelligence, will customise AI integration for individual enterprises, with SoftBank Group investing $3 billion annually to deploy OpenAI's solutions across its companies. SoftBank and OpenAI are also collaborating on the Stargate project, a $500 billion initiative to build AI infrastructure in the United States.
These moves highlight the growing importance of AI infrastructure, with companies like Oracle also securing major cloud contracts with OpenAI. SoftBank's substantial investments signal a strong belief in the potential of generative AI and its impact on various industries.
