SoftBank Completes $41 Bn OpenAI Investment, Takes Roughly 11% Stake

SoftBank has completed a $41 billion investment in OpenAI, giving the Japanese investor roughly an 11% stake in the maker of ChatGPT and marking one of the largest private financings in tech history. The deal, a mix of direct capital from SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2 and syndicated co-investments, is intended to support OpenAI’s rapid expansion of compute capacity, product development and global footprint.

SoftBank’s commitment was executed in multiple tranches, beginning with an initial close earlier this year and followed by a larger second closing that brought the total investment to $41 billion.

The financing structure comprised $30 billion from SoftBank’s Vision Fund vehicles and about $11 billion through syndicated co-investments from other backers. SoftBank said the second-stage infusion followed the first closing, in which it invested an earlier tranche through the fund.

Strategic Rationale

SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son framed the move as a long-term, “all in” bet on artificial intelligence and OpenAI’s vision for broadly beneficial AGI. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman welcomed the backing, saying the investment would help the company “move faster and bring advanced intelligence to the world.” Both companies said the capital will accelerate infrastructure and product plans while supporting responsible deployment of increasingly capable models.

The financing comes as OpenAI and partners pursue large-scale infrastructure initiatives, including a multi-stakeholder effort known in public reporting as the “Stargate” project to build next-generation AI data-centre capacity. Separately, SoftBank has been active on related infrastructure plays, including a high-profile deal to acquire digital infrastructure investor DigitalBridge in a transaction reported at roughly $4 billion.

Valuation and Implications

The funding comes amid a surge in private valuations for AI companies. Earlier estimates had already placed OpenAI’s valuation in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and recent secondary transactions and fundraising discussions are understood to have pushed that figure higher. The scale of SoftBank’s commitment highlights the depth of investor appetite for AI compute and model development, and underscores just how capital-intensive progress at the frontier of artificial intelligence has become.

For OpenAI, the deal provides a substantially stronger capital base to scale computing infrastructure, expand hiring, accelerate commercialisation and invest in governance and safety efforts. For SoftBank, the investment represents both a high-conviction financial bet and a strategic move to position itself at the centre of the global AI infrastructure ecosystem. Market observers say funding of this magnitude is likely to intensify competition for advanced chips, data-centre capacity and enterprise AI customers, while also raising fresh questions around market concentration and the geopolitics of advanced AI capabilities.