OpenAI secures $40 Billion investment from SoftBank

US-based AI company OpenAI received a $40 billion investment from the Japanese investment group SoftBank as part of a deal, marking the largest capital raise ever for a startup.

OpenAI announced that the investment increased the company's market value to $300 billion and would enable further advancements in AI research. The company stated that this funding is a critical step toward developing "Artificial General Intelligence" (AGI).

SoftBank described OpenAI as the closest partner to achieving the goal of "artificial superintelligence" (ASI) that surpasses human intelligence.

The Japanese investment giant revealed it would initially provide $10 billion, with the potential for an additional $30 billion by the end of 2025 if certain conditions are met.

OPEN-SOURCE MOVE

In an announcement on Monday, OpenAI revealed it had developed a more open generative AI model in response to growing competition.

Previously, the company followed a policy of closed and proprietary models. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated, "We've been thinking about this for a long time, but our priorities were different. Now, we feel it's important to do this."

Companies like Google, which advocate for closed models, argue that open-source models are more susceptible to malicious use and foreign government control.

However, companies like Meta and DeepSeek ensure their AI models are downloadable and customizable. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the Llama model had been downloaded one billion times, while DeepSeek's low-cost R1 model, released in January, garnered significant attention.

NEW CHATGPT FEATURES SPARK INTEREST

OpenAI noted that the recent image-generation features of ChatGPT have garnered significant attention.

Altman reported that the tool gained "a million users within an hour" and that OpenAI's graphical processing units (GPUs) were overloaded.

With this new investment, the company aims to strengthen its leadership in the AI field further.