SoftBank completes $41bn OpenAI investment, lifts stake to 11%
TL;DR
SoftBank Group announced on December 31, 2025 that it has completed an additional $22.5 billion investment in OpenAI, bringing its total commitment to $41 billion. The deal raises SoftBank’s aggregate ownership in OpenAI to about 11%, with the rest of the round filled by $11 billion from third‑party co‑investors.
About this summary
This article aggregates reporting from 5 news sources. 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
SoftBank’s decision to fully fund its colossal $41 billion OpenAI commitment is arguably the single most important capital allocation signal in AI this quarter. It formalizes OpenAI’s role as a quasi‑infrastructure asset for the global economy, and it locks in a long‑term, highly motivated financial sponsor whose core thesis is explicitly about AGI. When Masayoshi Son says he is “deeply aligned” with OpenAI’s vision that AGI should benefit all of humanity, he is also telegraphing that he intends to be a central financier of that transition, not a passive bystander.([group.softbank](https://group.softbank/en/news/press/20251231?utm_source=openai))
Strategically, this capital doesn’t just buy more GPUs; it de‑risks multi‑year bets like the Stargate megadata‑center buildout and subsequent model generations that would otherwise strain OpenAI’s balance sheet and Microsoft’s risk tolerance. It also adds another powerful stakeholder to the already complex OpenAI cap table, with SoftBank’s Vision Fund now structurally tied to OpenAI’s eventual liquidity events and platform strategy. For the broader race to AGI, this is a bet that scale still matters and that the frontier will be defined by those who can sustain tens of billions in capex on compute, data centers and talent, year after year.
