SoftBank boosts OpenAI with $41B bet for 11% AGI stake
TL;DR
SoftBank completed a $41 billion multi‑tranche investment in OpenAI, giving it roughly an 11% stake, according to a January 1, 2026 report by Italian outlet FIRSTonline that cites SoftBank and Reuters. The final $22–22.5 billion tranche closed at the end of December 2025, valuing OpenAI at around $260 billion pre‑money.
About this summary
This article aggregates reporting from 1 news source. The TL;DR is AI-generated from original reporting. Race to AGI's analysis provides editorial context on implications for AGI development.
Race to AGI Analysis
This is the largest single capital commitment we’ve yet seen into an AI lab, and it effectively cements OpenAI as the capital‑rich pace‑setter in the AGI race. A $41 billion war chest from a single strategic backer gives OpenAI extraordinary freedom to overbuild compute, pursue long‑horizon research bets, and absorb the burn of deploying increasingly capable models at planetary scale. For SoftBank, it’s the clearest expression of Masayoshi Son’s post‑Vision Fund thesis: bet the house on AGI and the infrastructure underneath it.([firstonline.info](https://www.firstonline.info/en/Softbank-closes-investment-in-OpenAI-for-%2441-billion-and-11%25-stake/))
The competitive implications are stark. Rival labs—Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI, Meta—are already well capitalized, but this round resets the bar for what “fully funded” means. It also tightens the coupling between OpenAI and SoftBank’s broader AI infrastructure strategy, including the pending DigitalBridge acquisition and mega‑data‑center projects like Stargate in the U.S., which aim to provide multi‑gigawatt‑scale compute for frontier models. Smaller labs will increasingly be forced either into niche specialization or into the orbit of hyperscalers and sovereign buyers. In raw firepower terms, this deal pulls OpenAI’s AGI timeline forward rather than back.
