Reuters has reported that SoftBank, a Japanese Conglomerate is planning to invest an additional $30 billion in OpenAI, a ChatGPT owner. This investment would be the integral part of the funding round that could reach up to $100 billion for OpenAI, and its value would be of $830 billion.
This heavy investment in AI is driven by Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank desire to strengthen the company’s position in the AI market. He has made an “all-in” bet on OpenAI. SoftBank had invested $41 billion in OpenAI in December, giving it an 11%stake.
This investment would be a big retreat for the ChatGPT owner, as the company is currently coping with increasing costs to run and train its AI models to gain a competitive edge over its competitors, like Alphabet’s Google ratchets.
Tokyo Morning Trade reporting a 3.5% increase in shares by SoftBank denied to comment on the bank’s intentions on investing in the AI market.
Reuters has further reported that Son rushed to arrange the funds for the previous investment, which pushed SoftBank to either hold or slow down its other deals.
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Both SoftBank and OpenAI are also investors in Stargate, which is another initiative to develop AI data centers for training and inference. The worth of this venture is estimated at $500 billion. According to executives, this initiative is vital for the US government’s ambitions of staying ahead of China in AI.
The aggressive support of SoftBank for OpenAI suggests that future leadership in AI technologies is dependent on the availability of funds that are required to support the development of models, data centers, and computing power. On the other hand, it also highlights the market imbalance as small AI players may strive to access big giants for funds. Softbank’s support also deepens the competition between China and the US in AI leadership and also puts excessive pressure on Open AI to ensure good return on investment.
