The News
Softbank is reportedly considering a $25 billion investment in OpenAI, according to multiple reports citing sources with knowledge.
The deal, if it were to go through, would make the Japanese tech fund the single largest investor in OpenAI, overtaking Microsoft. The report comes a week after the companies’ CEOs joined US President Donald Trump and the CEO of Oracle to announce that they would each spend at least $100 billion on a sprawling data center and AI infrastructure project called Stargate. The New York Times reported that the money could be used toward the ChatGPT maker’s commitment to Stargate.
Softbank could commit more than $40 billion in total value, the FT reported, with the exact amount a “moving target,” according to a source cited by the outlet. News of the talks comes as Big Tech remained largely bullish on massive investments for AI despite the market turmoil caused by Chinese startup DeepSeek’s low-cost model earlier this week.
SIGNALS
Big Tech sees 2025 as a “really big year.” And it will cost billions.
According to their most recent earning reports, Microsoft and Meta spent a combined $37.4 billion in the last quarter — nearly double what they both spent in the same period the previous year — primarily on chips and data centers, The Wall Street Journal reported. Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that 2025 will be a “really big year” for the industry: Stargate, certainly, “is premised on the notion that winning the A.I. war will require investment on par with the Manhattan Project,” Puck wrote. While the biggest tech firms are banking on big investments to stay ahead of the competition, some analysts are less sure: Emarketer’s principal analyst Jeremy Goldman said in a note following Meta’s earnings Wednesday that the company’s AI spending looks “bloated, not visionary.”
DeepSeek’s low-cost success rebalances the AI playing field
DeepSeek’s sudden prominence has been described by at least one leading tech venture capitalist as the industry’s “Sputnik moment,” but many analysts think that is overblown. The Chinese chatbot — which apparently cost a fraction to develop compared to the top US models — has rebalanced the playing field for some companies previously seen as lagging: Apple stock rose while others’ fell this week, as DeepSeek seemingly “vindicates” Apple’s slower strategy — plagued by delays and bugs — and points to a future where an efficient, cheap, and sophisticated AI will run on computers as small as those in smartphones, the Financial Times wrote. Meanwhile, European tech leaders — who have largely been scrambling to keep up with the US — told Semafor that DeepSeek’s success “shows we’re not in the final inning at all.”