The group has funded the full commitment, lifting its bet on the ChatGPT maker to about $41 billion and turning that move into one of the largest private tech financings ever seen.
The closing makes SoftBank a big inside owner in OpenAI, with a stake of around 11% in a company that now sits at the center of the generative AI boom.
SoftBank’s long game in artificial intelligence
The deal fits straight into Masayoshi Son’s long, slow push to turn SoftBank into a pure AI and infrastructure holding company.
For years, the Tokyo group has been building a giant private tech investment program through its Vision Funds, cycling out of old bets and moving more capital toward chips, cloud, and AI platforms instead of consumer apps.
Now the OpenAI position sits alongside its holdings in Arm and other infrastructure‑heavy assets as a core pillar of that story.
SoftBank has been clear that it sees artificial general intelligence as a once‑in‑a‑century shift.
Son has described the move as an “all in” bet on OpenAI and the broader AI stack, signaling to markets that the group wants to be the capital partner of choice when the most compute‑hungry AI projects in the world go shopping for funding.
How the $41 billion OpenAI round is structured
The current funding dates back to a March 2025 commitment to invest up to $40 billion into a for‑profit OpenAI subsidiary.
SoftBank and co‑investors agreed then to fund the company through a blend of direct capital and syndicated commitments, giving OpenAI longer‑term visibility on cash for models, data centers, and product roll‑outs.
SoftBank’s first closing came in April 2025, when it wired $7.5 billion through SoftBank Vision Fund 2.
On December 26, 2025, the group completed an additional $22.5 billion at a second closing, again via Vision Fund 2, and says it has now fully satisfied the March commitment.
Alongside that, other investors joined an upsized co‑investment of about $11 billion, taking the final aggregate funding in this structure to roughly $41 billion in total.
The result is a layered capital stack: SoftBank holds the largest single chunk, while other backers have locked in exposure through the same overall round.
For OpenAI, this setup offers both headline‑grabbing size and smoother governance than a messy series of smaller, separate deals.
What this deal means for AI infrastructure and data centers
The OpenAI funding closes just as SoftBank is also moving to buy DigitalBridge, a U.S. digital‑infrastructure investor, in a $4 billion transaction aimed at boosting its reach in data centers and related assets.
That step, paired with the OpenAI stake, shows SoftBank is not only backing AI models but also the power, networking, and real estate required to run them.
OpenAI has been part of “Stargate,” a multi‑year super‑scale data‑center initiative involving partners such as Oracle and major financial sponsors, built to handle next‑generation AI models that demand enormous compute.
Fresh capital from SoftBank and its syndicate gives the company more room to commit to that type of infrastructure and to secure long‑term capacity before rivals do the same.
For the wider market, this closes any doubt that AI infrastructure is now a financial asset class in its own right.
SoftBank’s check sizes, combined with separate hyperscaler spending, are pushing power, land, and connectivity costs higher in key regions while pulling sovereign funds and private equity deeper into the space.
OpenAI’s soaring valuation and SoftBank’s 11% stake
The March agreement pegged OpenAI at roughly $300 billion on a post‑money basis in the main funding structure.
Since then, a later secondary share sale completed in October has marked the company at around $500 billion, underscoring how quickly investor expectations have moved.
At the close of this round, SoftBank’s combined investments deliver an ownership interest of about 11% in OpenAI.
That makes SoftBank one of the largest outside owners at a time when many investors still cannot gain direct exposure to the company.
The position could give the Japanese group significant upside if OpenAI’s valuation continues to rise or if the company eventually pursues a public listing or other liquidity event.
The scale also matters for influence.
With double‑digit ownership and deep relationships across chips, telecoms, and data‑center ecosystems, SoftBank is now positioned as a key strategic partner when OpenAI evaluates long‑term infrastructure, distribution, and regional expansion decisions.
Why Masayoshi Son is pushing “all in” on AGI
SoftBank frames this deal in philosophical terms as much as financial ones.
In its latest statement, the company stressed that it shares OpenAI’s vision of ensuring that advanced AI benefits all of humanity, echoing Son’s long‑running narrative that AI will transform every sector.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, in turn, praised SoftBank for spotting the potential of AI early and committing capital with a strong belief in its impact on society, saying the firm’s global reach and scale can help bring advanced intelligence to more people.
That mutual messaging matters, because future regulatory debates around AI safety, data, and competition will likely scrutinize both capital flows and governance structures in companies like OpenAI.
For SoftBank’s own investors, the bet is bold but consistent.
After sharp swings in earlier Vision Fund portfolios, the group is concentrating more of its exposure into large, thematically aligned positions in AI, chips, and infrastructure instead of dozens of smaller consumer‑app plays.
What’s next: pressure on rivals and partners
With this funding closed, OpenAI now carries more dry powder to:
- Scale its model roadmap and training runs over multiple years.
- Lock in long‑term data‑center and energy contracts for mega‑scale clusters.
- Push deeper into enterprise products and partnerships worldwide.
Rivals in both the model and infrastructure layers will feel more pressure to respond, either by raising their own large rounds or by tightening partnerships with hyperscalers and sovereign funds.
At the same time, regulators in the U.S., Europe, and Asia are likely to keep watching how such concentrated capital shapes competition in AI, cloud, and chips.
For now, SoftBank has the position it wanted: a large, early‑mover stake in what has become the flagship name of generative AI, backed by a matching push into the hardware and infrastructure needed to power it.
