The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 27th that Japan's SoftBank is discussing an additional investment of up to $30 billion (about 43 trillion won) in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.
SoftBank has invested a total of $41 billion in OpenAI so far and holds 11% equity. It is the third-largest shareholder after Microsoft (MS, 27%) and the OpenAI nonprofit (26%). Masayoshi Son, SoftBank's chairman, also sold $5.8 billion worth of Nvidia equity to raise funds for the OpenAI investment.
OpenAI is currently seeking to raise new funding of up to $100 billion (about 145 trillion won). If this round is completed successfully, OpenAI's valuation is expected to rise to as high as $830 billion (about 1,200 trillion won).
Some in the market have also said that if OpenAI pursues an initial public offering (IPO), its valuation could reach $1 trillion.