SoftBank CEO says he wanted to be OpenAI early investor
Masayoshi Son, president and general manager of Softbank Group Corp., speaks at the company’s annual meeting in Tokyo, Japan on Friday, June 27, 2025.
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Softbank In Openai, “All”, CEO Masayoshi said on the last Friday, trying to realize the vision of the Japanese technology giant “artificial superity”.
This year, Japanese Multinational Holding increases Openai investments and participates in joint initiatives such as the $ 500 billion Stargate project.
According to Son, Softbank is now “all” at the artificial intelligence company, and the total investments planned in the company reach 6.8 trillion Japanese Yen ($ 33.2 billion).
Son will be listed at the end of Openai and will be the most valuable company in the world with my faith. However, he added that in such a company, “he took courage to invest”.
As it is understood, the son has long been continuing this conviction. During the shareholders’ meeting, before 2019, Openai CEO Sam Altman announced that Softbank asked if he could invest $ 10 billion in the company.
“I said … I was serious because I had financial resources thanks to Vision Fund’s performance. But frankly Sam spoke to other potential investors and finally chose Microsoft.”
Microsoft ultimately signed the agreement, which made it a special information processing provider for Openai’s research, products and programming interfaces. However, Microsoft lost the status of Openai’s private cloud provider at the beginning of this year.
And this relationship is now on the rocky base. According to recent reports, Microsoft did not approve of an Openai restructuring plan that would turn it into a more traditional non -profit company.
Referring to the reports, Son suggested that he had to choose Softbank, not Microsoft as the first partner of Altman, but said that Softbank was smaller at that time and Microsoft has global supply chains, technical capabilities and brand value.
If Softbank did not reconstruct a non -profit organization until December 31, it could reduce some of Openai’s investment of $ 30 billion in the last financial tour to $ 20 billion.
However, on Friday, the son said that his conviction on Openai was only stronger and that Softbank would continue to deepen his relationship with the company, regardless of what was happening in Microsoft.
Artificial super
Some of the son’s belief in Openai stems from Softbank’s desire to be in the center of “Artificial Super -Sustligence”. 10,000 times smarter than people defined as AI.
In his statement on Friday, he said that Softbank wanted to be the largest platform provider for this ace in the next decade and served as the “organizer of the industry during the artificial Superintelligige period”.
He added that Softbank’s partnership with Openai will be necessary for these plans with Softbank’s British Semiconductor Company ARM in 2016.
Softbank is increasingly aggressive in AI investments, including the purchase of US -based CHIPS designer AMP for $ 6.5 billion earlier this year.
Bloomberg News reported Last week, referring to people who are familiar with the issue, this son is also intending to establish an industrial complex of $ 1 trillion to develop in the USA.
