SoftBank Reportedly Eyeing $1.5 Billion OpenAI Stock Purchase

SoftBank reportedly wants to purchase $1.5 billion in OpenAI stock.

It’s part of an effort by SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son to strengthen the company’s stake in OpenAI and position it as an artificial intelligence (AI) leader, the Financial Times (FT) reported Wednesday (Nov. 27).

SoftBank will purchase the shares via a tender offer, allowing current and former OpenAI employees who have held their stock for more than two years to sell, sources familiar with the situation told the FT.

The tender offer prices employee holdings by OpenAI’s most recent funding round, which happened last month, raising $6 billion and valuing the firm at $150 billion.

SoftBank Vision Fund invested $500 million in that round, the report said, and will purchase this new set of shares.

As the FT notes, this year has seen AI startups raise tens of billions this year, with investors taking a chance on the technology, if not the loss-making companies behind it. Elon Musk is set to close a $5 billion funding round for his xAI this week — valuing that company at $45 billion — while Amazon recently invested another $4 billion into OpenAI rival Anthropic.

As for SoftBank, its CEO has been open about his admiration of OpenAI chief Sam Altman, and — sources told the FT — has been looking to purchase a bigger stake in the AI firm. Son wants his company to play a larger role in the broader AI industry, and eventually in the development of artificial super intelligence (ASI).

“This is what I was born to do, to realize ASI,” he said earlier this year.

Enterprise spending on generative AI increased by sixfold this year, jumping from $2.3 billion in 2023 to $13.8 billion, venture capital firm Menlo Ventures said last week.

“2024 marks the year that generative AI became a mission-critical imperative for enterprise,” Joff Redfern, partner at Menlo, said in a news release. “The numbers tell a dramatic story of organizations moving beyond pilots to embedding AI at the core of their business strategies.”

The firm found that nearly three-quarters of enterprise IT decision-makers from companies with 50 or more employees anticipate broader adoption of generative AI in the near term.

Meanwhile, the financial industry is at the brink of a major shift as AI tools are folded into banking, according to the PYMNTS Intelligence and NCR Voyix collaboration, “Is AI the Master Key to Banking’s Next Era?”

The report showed that 72% of leaders in the finance space report they are using AI in their operations.