SoftBank is in conversations to launch an investment of between 15,000 million and 25,000 million dollars in OpenAi, according to Financial Times. This agreement with the Japanese bank involves a remarkable turn in the configuration of the AI market worldwide and that could have clear repercussions in the coming years. This bet, even if it is the lowest range, would turn SoftBank the main investor of the Chatgpt startup, since Microsoft invested at the time about 14,000 million euros.
Until now the relationship seemed inseparable between the firm founded by Bill Gates and the one directed by Sam Altman. However, this investment would be framed in the Mega Agreement announced in the White House to create a massive network of data centers. The Stargate project, supported by SoftBank, Open AI, Oracle and MGX (the United Arab Emirates Investment Fund) is the biggest commitment that has been made in this regard with an initial investment of 100,000 million dollars (which can scale up to the 500,000 million in four years). This is the largest infrastructure project in history.
The Japanese bank has already invested about 15,000 million in this project and would now invest in the firm itself directly. This can mark a point and apart with Microsoft because so far the chatgpt has depended for its launched to a large extent on the computing and cloud power of the Silicon Valley giant. In any case, Microsoft would continue to have a greater domain in the capital of the start up because, beyond the amount of money invested the American giant did so at a time when the value of the company was lower.
The reason why Softbank would take this step would be to strengthen the relationship between both companies and join its destinations. Both parties want to enter the AI hardware market forcefully. The Japanese bank has had an irregular performance when it comes to putting a foot in this segment with the start -up of a vehicle like Vision Fund. Since 2019 there was an approach with a possible financing of 1,000 million dollars that never concretized.
This bet, in any case, comes at a difficult time for the Hardware AI. Especially after the launch of the Deepseek China. This would have a 95% lower training cost and also smaller costs in chips, infrastructure, energy … etc. In summary, the perspectives for the value chain of artificial intelligence have been questioned. With this investment, which would still be in the treasury, SoftBank redouble its bet even in the current conditions.
The news of SoftBank’s possible investment helped boost the increase in Asian actions related to chips, as it continues to account for the investment confidence. Aguantest rises 3.22% and Tokyo Electron 1.87%. For its part, the European ASML does 3.44%. The chips are one of the keys to the infrastructure of the new technology and for the data centers that will support it. Siemens Energy, which had collapsed Monday due to the idea of lower energy demand of these centers rises 3.7%. SoftBank’s shares fell 1% on Thursday morning in Tokyo.
“It makes sense that NASDAQ and semiconductor -related actions are being bought (after the news of a possible agreement), but SoftBank, which is putting the money, will not see the same impulse of purchase,” said Takehiko Masuzawa, head of operations of operations of Phillip Securities Japan actions.
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