Japan's SoftBank, led by Chairman Masayoshi Son, has fulfilled its entire pledge to invest $40 billion (about 57 trillion won) in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.
U.S. business broadcaster CNBC reported on the 30th (local time), citing multiple sources, that SoftBank recently paid the remaining $22 billion to $22.5 billion of its investment commitment to OpenAI. With this, SoftBank wrapped up within the year its plan announced in Feb. to value OpenAI at $260 billion and invest $40 billion.
SoftBank previously invested $8 billion directly in OpenAI in Apr., and has since deployed funds in stages, including raising an additional $10 billion with co-investors.
The valuation of OpenAI has since risen sharply. In Oct., it soared to $500 billion, and there is speculation that if it pursues an initial public offering (IPO), it could be valued at up to $1 trillion (about 1,400 trillion won).
With this investment, SoftBank's equity stake in OpenAI has exceeded 10%. It has solidified its position as a key shareholder after Microsoft (MS) and the nonprofit OpenAI foundation. In Oct., OpenAI reorganized its corporate structure into a public benefit corporation (PBC) that pursues both the public interest and profit, adjusting the equity stakes of MS and the foundation to 27% and 26%, respectively.
To fund this investment, SoftBank sold all of its $5.8 billion stake in Nvidia last month. At the time, Son said, "I sold it with great reluctance to invest in OpenAI and others," adding, "In fact, I didn't want to sell even a single share."
Son also said, "If we invest $10 trillion over 10 years, we can recoup it in half a year," expressing strong conviction in the growth potential of the artificial intelligence (AI) market and dismissing the "AI bubble theory" raised by some.
Part of the latest OpenAI investment is expected to go into Stargate, a project to build a massive data center in the United States that SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle are jointly promoting.
SoftBank is also continuing to expand its AI investments, announcing the day before that it would acquire DigitalBridge, an asset management firm that invests in AI infrastructure, for $4 billion (about 5.7 trillion won).