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OpenAI and SoftBank Invest $1 Billion in SB Energy to Expand Stargate Data Center Buildout

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OpenAI and SoftBank Group will jointly invest $1 billion in SB Energy, committing $500 million each to accelerate the expansion of data center and power infrastructure for their Stargate initiative, SB Energy said on Friday.

SB Energy, which is owned by SoftBank, will build and operate OpenAI’s previously announced 1.2-gigawatt data center campus in Milam County, Texas. The facility is a key component of Stargate, a massive, multi-year plan to scale artificial intelligence training and inference capacity in the United States.

As part of the partnership, SB Energy will also become a customer of OpenAI, using its application programming interfaces and deploying ChatGPT internally for employees.

Stargate is a $500 billion initiative backed by major investors including Oracle, and was publicly endorsed by Donald Trump when the plan was unveiled in January 2025. The project reflects the scale at which leading AI developers are now operating as they race to secure computing power.

The deal highlights a broader industry shift in which technology companies are investing directly in energy and power infrastructure. Access to reliable electricity has become a critical bottleneck for AI expansion, as larger and more numerous data centers sharply increase power demand.

SB Energy said it is developing several data center campuses, with initial facilities expected to begin service later this year. “The partnership accelerates our delivery of advanced AI data center campuses and associated energy infrastructure at the scale required to advance Stargate and secure America’s AI future,” said SB Energy co-CEO Rich Hossfeld.

The data center construction boom has also driven rivals to commit unprecedented sums to infrastructure. Meta Platforms and other Big Tech firms have announced multi-billion-dollar investments spanning chips, cooling systems, servers and power generation.

At the same time, OpenAI is facing rapidly rising costs to train and operate its AI models amid intensifying competition from Alphabet’s Google. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told employees late last year that the company had entered a “code red” phase, prioritising improvements to ChatGPT while delaying other product launches to counter Google’s Gemini gaining traction.

DeepSeek Plans February Launch of Coding-Focused AI Model V4, Report Says

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Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek is expected to launch its next-generation AI model, V4, in mid-February, with a strong focus on coding capabilities, The Information reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

According to the report, internal testing by DeepSeek employees indicates that the V4 model could outperform leading rivals such as Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s GPT series in software development and coding-related tasks. The model is also said to show major improvements in handling extremely long and complex coding prompts, a feature that could give developers an edge when working on large-scale or intricate software projects.

Reuters was not able to independently verify the report, and DeepSeek did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Based in Hangzhou, DeepSeek has rapidly emerged as a prominent player in China’s drive to build a domestic AI ecosystem and reduce reliance on foreign technology. The company attracted international attention after several Silicon Valley executives publicly praised its earlier models, including DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, for their performance and cost efficiency.

In January, Reuters reported that DeepSeek claimed to have developed a low-cost rival to ChatGPT, further boosting its profile in the global AI race. However, the company has also faced scrutiny in some countries over concerns related to data security and privacy practices, highlighting the growing regulatory attention surrounding advanced AI systems.

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

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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.

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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.