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Investing.com-- SoftBank (TYO:9984) Group and OpenAI have agreed to set up a joint venture in Japan to offer artificial intelligence services to domestic firms, the Japanese technology giant said in a statement on Monday.
Softbank (OTC:SFTBY) will also spend $3 billion annually to deploy OpenAI services across its group of companies, the firm said.
The joint venture is called SB OpenAI Japan and will develop an AI for enterprise applications, called Cristal intelligence.
The partnership comes just days after reports said SoftBank was seeking to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI. Such a move could make SoftBank among OpenAI’s biggest backers, behind Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), which has been investing in OpenAI since 2019.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman- who is currently in Japan to meet with Son and top-level Japanese officials- said over the weekend that the start-up was also developing an AI device.
SoftBank and OpenAI are the lead companies on a $500 billion venture, called Project Stargate, to build AI infrastructure in the U.S.. Softbank has committed $15 billion to the project, recent reports said.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has repeatedly expressed his intent to invest aggressively in the rapidly growing AI industry, which he sees as the future of tech development.
SoftBank is also exposed to AI through its British chipmaking unit Arm Holdings (NASDAQ:ARM), which it listed in 2023.
Still, news of the SoftBank-OpenAI partnership comes amid growing questions over the need for outsized investment in AI infrastructure, especially after the release of China’s DeepSeek R1 AI model.
DeepSeek appeared to match the performance of similar offerings from OpenAI and other rivals while using older hardware and a fraction of the latter’s budget.