SoftBank Secures 10% Stake in OpenAI After Completing $40 Billion Investment
In Focus
- SoftBank transferred final tranche of up to $22.5 billion to OpenAI last week
- OpenAI had to restructure to a for-profit entity to receive the last tranche
- The investment firm explored multiple cash-raising strategies complete the payment
SoftBank has fulfilled its commitment to invest $40 billion in OpenAI. According to CNBC, the Japanese conglomerate sent the final tranche of $22 billion to $22.5 billion to the AI company last week. Prior to this tranche, SoftBank’s OpenAI investment installments included a syndicated $10 billion and an $8 billion payment.
SoftBank Had Committed Payment in 1-2 Years
SoftBank’s $40 billion investment pushes the Japanese investor’s stake in OpenAI past the 10% mark. At the beginning of this year, reports indicated that SoftBank would pay the amount over a one to two year period.
SoftBank secured a deal to invest in OpenAI at a $300 billion valuation in April 2025. Since then, OpenAI’s valuation of OpenAI has risen significantly. Part of the investment will support OpenAI’s Stargate project, a $500 billion initiative to build AI data centers for training and inference.
Stargate is a joint venture between OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank. Executives in the companies say the project is critical to the U.S. government’s ambitions of staying ahead of China in AI. The three companies have already started setting up new Stargate data centers across the United States.
Condition for SoftBank’s Investment to OpenAI
Payment of the latest SoftBank AI investment tranche was pegged on the condition that OpenAI restructures to a for-profit corporation by the end of 2025. The AI lab achieved the ambitious goal in October 2025 following a restructuring deal that gave Microsoft a 27% stake in the new OpenAI Group Corporation.
The new funding is critical in enabling OpenAI to meet the rising costs of training and running its AI models as competition from Google heats up. Recently, CEO Sam Altman issued a code red directive to accelerate core ChatGPT performance upgrades, effectively delaying the rollout of other products.
OpenAI is engaged in investment talks with Amazon to raise a potential $10 billion in additional funds. If successful, these investments could update OpenAI’s valuation to about $900 billion, giving SoftBank significant paper gain.
The Race to Complete OpenAI’s Investment
SoftBank was reportedly racing to close its funding commitment to OpenAI by the end of this year. The investment firm explored multiple cash-raising strategies, including the sale of previous investments to raise the funds.
One of the investments that the Japan-based investor offloaded is its $5.8 billion stake in NVIDIA. SoftBank also sold part of its stake in T-Mobile for $9.17 billion to capitalize its bet on OpenAI.
The Japanese investor has been working to capitalize the growing demand for computing power that anchors AI applications. News of SoftBank’s AI investment to OpenAI came a day after the Japanese conglomerate agreed to acquire private equity firm DigitalBridge Group in a $4 billion deal. This acquisition is expected to boost its ability to scale digital infrastructure opportunities globally.
