Masayoshi Son said SoftBank will go all-in on Open AI, creating a superintelligence center for ASI.

SoftBank Group (Soft Bank) CEO Masayoshi Son stated on Friday that they are ready to go all-in on OpenAI. Since 2024, this Japanese big tech has been actively increasing its investment in OpenAI, participating in various collaborative projects including StarGate (. Masayoshi Son mentioned that although OpenAI is not yet publicly traded and has not achieved profitability, SoftBank's total investment commitment has reached approximately 4.8 trillion yen (about 33.2 billion USD)). He believes OpenAI will eventually go public and become one of the most valuable companies in the world, but Masayoshi Son also thinks that investing in such a company requires immense courage.

Open AI chose Microsoft, losing the opportunity to collaborate with SoftBank.

At the shareholder meeting, Masayoshi Son revealed that as early as 2019, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had asked him if he was willing to invest 10 billion dollars in OpenAI. He agreed because OpenAI was performing well at the time and Son had the funds. Later, Sam Altman chose to partner with Microsoft.

Microsoft established a strategic partnership with OpenAI in 2019, investing $1 billion and becoming its exclusive cloud computing platform, gaining exclusive rights to integrate the GPT model into Azure services. This collaboration has led to the birth of products such as ChatGPT and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

At the beginning of 2025, OpenAI expanded its cloud partnerships, and Microsoft lost its exclusive supplier status. Recently, Microsoft did not approve OpenAI's restructuring plan, which is set to transform from its current nonprofit structure into a traditional for-profit enterprise. These changes have raised market doubts about the stability of the partnership between the two parties.

Masayoshi Son stated that at that time SoftBank was smaller in scale, while Microsoft had global supply chains, technical talent, and brand advantages, which were conditions that SoftBank was difficult to provide in the past.

Masayoshi Son said SoftBank will go all-in on OpenAI.

SoftBank has clearly stated that if OpenAI does not transition from a nonprofit organization to a for-profit entity by December 31, 2025, the investment amount will be reduced from $30 billion to $20 billion. Nevertheless, Masayoshi Son emphasized that his confidence in OpenAI is growing day by day, and SoftBank will go all-in on OpenAI.

SoftBank's new vision core: Artificial Super Intelligence

Masayoshi Son's investment in OpenAI has a longer-term goal behind it; he hopes that SoftBank will become the industrial organizer and largest platform provider in the era of Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). ASI is an AI system with an intelligence level a thousand times greater than that of humans. Masayoshi Son stated that within the next decade, SoftBank will build the infrastructure to support ASI, with OpenAI and the UK chip design company Arm (acquired by SoftBank in 2016) being two of the main pillars. SoftBank is actively investing in the AI chip ecosystem. Earlier this year, the group acquired the American chip design company Ampere for $6.5 billion, expanding its AI hardware capabilities.

SoftBank plans to invest $1 trillion to build an AI superintelligent city.

According to Bloomberg, Masayoshi Son is considering building a $1 trillion AI and robotics industrial park in the United States, possibly in Arizona, tentatively named Project Crystal Land. The park is expected to integrate functions such as AI research and development, manufacturing, and automation systems, aiming to become a global hub for the AI industry. Sources indicate that SoftBank has begun negotiations with the U.S. federal government to seek tax incentives and infrastructure support while attempting to attract semiconductor giants like TSMC and Samsung to participate in the project.

In this article, Masayoshi Son stated that SoftBank will go all-in on Open AI to build an ASI superintelligence center. It first appeared in Chain News ABMedia.