SoftBank mulls new $30bn OpenAI investment

• Japanese giant already owns around 11% of the ChatGPT firm
• SoftBank invested $30bn in OpenAI in 2025 as part of Masayoshi Son’s AI vision
• OpenAI chief Sam Altman is looking to raise $50bn of funding, which could value company at as much as $830bn

SoftBank Group is once again looking to up its investments in AI, with the Japanese tech and telecom giant reportedly locked in talks over the prospect of pumping a further $30bn in OpenAI.

Back in December, SoftBank Group completed a $22.5bn investment in the ChatGPT-developer through its Vision Fund 2, taking its total investment in the AI firm to $30bn and its stake in OpenAI to around 11% – see SoftBank Group puts its money where its AI mouth is.

Now, in a move first reported by the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), SoftBank Group could potentially double its existing investment in the company.

SoftBank’s chairman and CEO, Masayoshi Son, has made AI a core strategic focus for the group.

At the end of 2025, Son stated: “We are deeply aligned with OpenAI’s vision of ensuring AGI [artificial general intelligence] benefits all of humanity.”

OpenAI is seeking further investment as it continues to build upon its generative AI models. According to Bloomberg, CEO Sam Altman has opened talks with investors in efforts to raise at least $50bn of additional funding that would value the company at up to $830bn.

This would mark another major leap in OpenAI’s valuation, which was just $29bn in early 2023 and had topped $500bn by October of last year.

It continues SoftBank Group’s momentum in the market after a very active 2025, when it upped investments and acquisitions in areas such as ABB’s robotics arm and chip designer, Ampere Computing, while divesting some assets, including its stake in Nvidia that was valued at $5.8bn.

It also splashed $4bn to buy infrastructure asset manager DigitalBridge and was one of the core members of the AI infrastructure Stargate Project announced by President Donald Trump at the start of last year.

- James Pearce, Editor, TelecomTV