SoftBank has taken a historic step in artificial intelligence investments. The company’s CEO Masayoshi Son announced that they will invest a total of $33.2 billion in OpenAI. This statement was made at SoftBank’s annual shareholder meeting.
SoftBank is making a significant investment in OpenAI
According to Son’s statement, the aim of this investment is not just a commercial partnership; it is to lead an era of artificial superintelligence that surpasses human intelligence by 10,000 times. Son said that the relationship they established with OpenAI is at the center of this vision and that SoftBank is taking all risks to become a leader in this field.
This interest in OpenAI is not new for the CEO. It was revealed that Sam Altman made a $10 billion investment offer to SoftBank before 2019, that Son approached this offer positively, but Altman preferred other investors. Microsoft’s strategic collaboration with OpenAI stood out at the time because it had more technical capacity and trust on a global scale.
However, the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI changed in 2024. Microsoft did not support the structural changes aimed at transforming OpenAI into a traditional for-profit company. This development presented SoftBank with a new area of opportunity. Although Masayoshi Son understood that Microsoft was the first choice, he implied that this choice was a mistake in the long run.
SoftBank’s vision is not limited to investing only in OpenAI. The company aims to be the organizer of the era defined as “artificial superintelligence”. According to Masayoshi Son’s definition, this concept includes artificial systems that are 10,000 times superior to human intelligence.
In line with this goal, SoftBank is also making technological assets such as Arm, which it acquired in 2016, and US chip company Ampere, which it recently acquired for $6.5 billion, a part of this process.
