SoftBank is committed to the joint company with Openai

Soft banks He has pledged to spend $ 3 billion per year for himself and his subsidiaries to use OpenAi technology, according to a joint announcement on Monday.

The two also announced a new joint business, announced as “SB OpenAi Japan”, which will market OpenAI business technology exclusively for the main companies in Japan.

The agreement will give access to SoftBank and its subsidiaries to Chatgpt Enterprise, the OpenI API, personalized models and products of agents such as Operatorwhich describes as “an agent who can go to the web to perform tasks for you”, how to plan vacations and complete forms. It will also include access to the new agent of Openai, once it is launched: a tool called “deep research” that OpenII says, may perform several steps analysis on the web. SoftBank marked all Operai products that it will use as a set of “intelligence” tools.

ArmThe British chips designer acquired by SoftBank in 2016, will also use Operai tools to “boost productivity throughout the company,” according to the announcement.

In a live event broadcast on Monday morning, which was carried out jointly by SoftBank, SoftBank Group, Openai and ARM, the audience executives represented companies that collectively represented more than half of the total market capitalization of Japan, According to SoftBank.

During the presentation, they say that he believes that artificial general intelligence, or AGI, a vaguely defined reference point that refers to the AI ​​that equals or overcomes the human intellect in a wide range of tasks, will be a reality in less than 10 years.

They are said through a translator that he believes that “AGI can be achieved first in large business businesses,” and added that to achieve it, “a lot of money is necessary” and that such funds are “only available in large companies in This moment ”

The news of the SoftBank and OpenAi strategic association occurs days after CNBC confirmed that OpenAi is in conversations to collect Up to $ 40 billion In a round of funds directed by Softbank of Masayoshi they are with an assessment of up to $ 340 billion.

SoftBank would contribute between $ 15 billion and $ 25 billion, according to two people familiar with the negotiations that asked not to be named because the conversations are ongoing. If the round was completed, Softbank would overcome Microsoft As the main sponsor of OpenAI.

Part of the financing can be used for OpenAi’s commitment to Stargate, a joint business between SoftBank, OpenAi and Oracle which was introduced by President Donald Trump Last week, the fountains said. The plan requires that billions of dollars be invested in the US infrastructure.

During the presentation on Monday morning, they were said he hoped to work with Openai, Oracle and others in the Stargate project.

Operai was last valued at $ 157 billion by private investors. At the end of 2022, the company launched its Chatgpt Chatbot, starting a boom in the generative AI. Opadai He closed his last round of $ 6.6 billion in Octoberpreparing to compete aggressively with Elon Musk’s XAI, as well as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and anthropic.

Meanwhile, the Depseek Chinese starting laboratory has gone viral in the United States, presenting a new competition to OpenAi. Deepseek saw its application soar at the top of Apple The App Store classifications this week and US markets led to reports that their powerful model was trained at a fraction of the cost of US competitors.

In an event in Washington, DC on Thursday presented by Openai, CEO Sam Altman said Depseek is “clearly a great model.”

“This is a reminder of the level of competition and the need for the democratic LL to win,” he said. He said he also points to the “level of interest in reasoning, the level of interest in the open source.”