SoftBank is poised to invest $3 billion annually to provide its subsidiaries with access to ChatGPT, while planning a total investment of between $15 billion and $25 billion in OpenAI, potentially boosting OpenAI's valuation to $340 billion.

As part of this investment strategy, SoftBank has established a joint venture with OpenAI, known as SB OpenAI Japan, where both entities hold equal stakes.

The collaboration will also see the launch of a new AI service from SoftBank called Cristal, which will leverage ChatGPT technology and be initially available to its companies, including Arm.

This investment is part of a larger $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure initiative, which aims to fund research and development for ChatGPT hardware.

OpenAI's recent launch of ChatGPT Deep Research appears to have been a strategic move to secure substantial funding, reportedly raising tens of billions of dollars.

On February 3, 2025, OpenAI announced its ChatGPT Deep Research AI agent, a response to the competitive threat posed by the Chinese startup DeepSeek, which has developed a cost-effective AI model.

The release of the o3-mini reasoning models by OpenAI on February 2, 2025, was aimed at addressing challenges introduced by DeepSeek's innovations.

There are rumors that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and SoftBank's Masayoshi Son have discussed the creation of a revolutionary AI device intended to replace smartphones, with an initial research and development investment of around $1 billion.

This partnership echoes SoftBank's previous successful investment strategy, notably its early gamble with the iPhone exclusivity deal.

If this funding round proceeds as planned, SoftBank could emerge as OpenAI's largest investor, surpassing contributions from Microsoft.