SoftBank completes $41 billion investment in OpenAI, deepening bet on AI

SoftBank Group said it has completed a $41 billion investment in OpenAI, marking one of the largest private funding rounds ever and giving the Japanese group an ownership stake of about 11% in the maker of ChatGPT.

The move underscores SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son’s increasingly aggressive push into artificial intelligence, which he has described as an “all in” bet. Son is positioning SoftBank to capitalise on booming demand for AI computing power, spanning both software and the physical infrastructure that underpins advanced models.

SoftBank said it completed an additional $22.5 billion investment on Wednesday, following an earlier $7.5 billion injection in April. OpenAI also secured an expanded syndicated co-investment of $11 billion from other backers as part of the round. In March, SoftBank had agreed to invest up to $40 billion into a for-profit OpenAI subsidiary, with the funding structured through a mix of direct capital and syndicated investments.

The transaction initially valued OpenAI at about $300 billion on a post-money basis. However, a subsequent secondary share sale completed in October pushed OpenAI’s valuation to roughly $500 billion, according to PitchBook data. CNBC first reported the completion of the latest investment earlier in the day.

The deal comes as artificial intelligence has become the central driver of global technology investment, reshaping corporate strategies and investor expectations. OpenAI has emerged as a key beneficiary of that shift, sitting at the heart of an industry-wide surge in AI spending.

OpenAI is also a core participant in “Stargate,” a large-scale, multi-year data centre initiative being developed alongside Oracle and other partners. The project aims to support next-generation AI models and is backed by major investors including SoftBank, further linking the group’s capital deployment to the infrastructure required for future AI growth.