Japanese tech giant SoftBank is urgently seeking $22.5 billion in funding to fulfill its commitment to AI partner OpenAI. According to Reuters, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son may take various measures to raise the funds, including utilizing unused margin loans related to its equity in British chip design company Arm Holdings.
SoftBank is one of the main funders of OpenAI and participated in the $500 billion "Starlink" data center project, which was announced along with Oracle and Abu Dhabi's investment company MGX at a White House event last year. This ambitious infrastructure development plan aims to build enough GPU data centers in the US and other countries to drive the development of OpenAI's next-generation models and advances in artificial general intelligence (AGI).
However, there has been controversy over whether OpenAI and its partners can fulfill their commitment of up to $500 billion or even raise the initial $100 billion needed to launch the project. Soon after the plan was announced, Elon Musk, co-founder of OpenAI and CEO of xAI, questioned whether they truly had the capability to meet the financial demands of the "Starlink" initiative.
Despite this, Oracle has already begun large-scale infrastructure construction for OpenAI and has taken on significant loans for this purpose. Meanwhile, SoftBank has funded this effort by selling its shares in NVIDIA, but SoftBank's investment in "Starlink" depends on OpenAI's profitability transition.
In October, OpenAI successfully completed its transition, placing the responsibility of fundraising back on SoftBank. According to Reuters, SoftBank could secure about $11.5 billion in capital through equity loans from Arm Holdings. Additionally, SoftBank holds about $11 billion in T-Mobile shares and approximately $27 billion in cash available as of the end of September to address this agreement.
Time is pressing, and Son has become quite cautious, personally reviewing investments exceeding $50 million. OpenAI needs this money to act quickly. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has successfully convinced partners such as Oracle and Crusoe to invest billions of dollars in a data center filled with the latest AMD and NVIDIA hardware. The "Starlink" flagship facility in Abilene, Texas, partially launched earlier this year, and Oracle expects to soon start charging OpenAI for services.
Key Points:
🌟 SoftBank urgently needs $22.5 billion to meet its commitment to OpenAI.
💰 SoftBank may raise funds through equity loans from Arm Holdings and other assets.
🚀 OpenAI's infrastructure project "Starlink" is rapidly advancing and is expected to be operational soon.
