OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son are AI’s new power couple
Summary
The Japanese conglomerate is in talks to spend up to $43 billion to boost the ChatGPT developer.
In his newly built palace near Tokyo, lined by stone statues of Roman emperors and surrounded by an 18-hole golf course, Masayoshi Son was stewing. After declaring for years the imminent arrival of the artificial-intelligence revolution, the chief executive officer of SoftBank Group had missed out on it.
“I haven’t been able to do anything," he thought, according to a speech he gave to SoftBank investors last year. “Can I just get old like this and die?"
As it turned out, all he needed was a new golden boy. And now Son, who has a history of latching onto charismatic startup founders, has found one in Sam Altman.
In what would be the largest-ever investment in a startup, Son is preparing to put as much as $43 billion toward Altman’s OpenAI in a pair of transactions. SoftBank is in talks to invest between $15 billion and $25 billion in the ChatGPT maker as part of a blockbuster $40 billion funding round, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The round would value OpenAI at up to $300 billion—nearly double its valuation in October and an undeniable sign of Son’s confidence in its prospects.
In addition, the Japanese tech and investment conglomerate has committed $18 billion toward Stargate, a venture to build cloud computing centers for OpenAI to use, according to people familiar with the matter.
For Altman, who was traveling to Tokyo on Thursday, the tie-up provides him with a deep-pocketed backer at a critical moment. His company’s relationship with Microsoft, its biggest investor to date and longtime exclusive technology partner, has been fraying over OpenAI’s contention that it wasn’t getting enough cloud computing power. And the broader AI world has been thrown on its heels by the splashy arrival of DeepSeek, a Chinese developer of cheaply made and free-to-use AI models, which has sparked skepticism about OpenAI’s strategy of spending big on proprietary technology.
An aerial view of Masayoshi Son’s residence near Tokyo.
Son’s commitment to OpenAI and Stargate ensures that Altman’s company will have ample cloud computing firepower in the coming years just as it has ended the exclusivity portion of its Microsoft deal. And by leading a funding round that would be the biggest in Silicon Valley history, Son is enthusiastically endorsing Altman’s plan to keep spending gobs of cash on leading-edge AI systems.
“For all of us, the AI era represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help build a better, safer, healthier, and more prosperous future," Son wrote in a widely distributed email message Thursday.
At an event hosted by his company in Washington, D.C., the same day, Altman praised DeepSeek’s technology as “great work" and framed its emergence in terms of U.S. competition with China.
“This is a reminder of the level of competition and the need for democratic AI to win," he said.
Big gambler
Son’s plans for OpenAI eclipse his biggest-ever bets. The fortunes of the debt-friendly, risk-addicted CEO have been on a roller coaster since he emerged as a force in the 1990s. An early wager on Alibaba and its founder, Jack Ma, was a highlight, while a failed AI chips across the world.
Over the course of 2024, Son became a convert to Altman’s vision. The SoftBank CEO gave a speech in October in which he gushed about OpenAI’s newest technology and said he had recently asked ChatGPT how to turn 10 million yen into 100 million yen—though he didn’t share its answer with the crowd.
Write to Eliot.Brown@wsj.com, Berber Jin at berber.jin@wsj.com and Keach Hagey at Keach.Hagey@wsj.com
