Organisation · company · JP

SoftBank

Acts as a financier rather than a builder of the AI boom — leading OpenAI's $40bn round, backing the Stargate project, and owning the chip designer Arm.

10 entries · September 2020 – March 2026

SoftBank is the Japanese conglomerate and investment group led by Masayoshi Son, best known in technology for its Vision Fund and for large, concentrated bets on companies it believes will define the next computing era. In the current AI cycle it has been less a builder than a financier: it led OpenAI's $40 billion round in March 2025 — reported as the largest private technology financing on record — and is a central backer of the Stargate data-centre project, alongside deals such as its acquisition of the chip designer Ampere Computing. That role makes SoftBank one of the biggest single sources of the capital funding the AI compute build-out, and ties a large part of Son's strategy to whether those investments eventually pay off.

Category
Big tech & backers
Founded
1981
HQ
Tokyo, JP
Funding
Investment holding group; controls chip designer Arm; public (TSE: 9984)
Key people
Masayoshi Son

Appears alongside

Featured in threads

Tracks

  • Money & business 9
  • Compute & infrastructure 5
  • Labs & people 2

  1. OpenAI closes record $122 billion funding round at $852 billion valuation

    SoftBank and Andreessen Horowitz co-led the round, which included roughly $3 billion from individual investors via bank channels, superseding the $730bn figure from five weeks earlier.

    Money & business

  2. OpenAI secures $110 billion funding round from Amazon, Nvidia and SoftBank

    Amazon's $50bn split into $15bn upfront and $35bn tied to future milestones, paired with a deal making AWS the exclusive third-party cloud provider for OpenAI Frontier.

    Money & business · Compute & infrastructure

  3. OpenAI reaches $500bn valuation via employee share sale

    Current and former staff sold roughly $6.6 billion of stock to SoftBank, Thrive Capital, MGX and others, up from a $300 billion valuation set in a March 2025 funding round.

    Money & business

  4. OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank expand Stargate with five new US data centre sites

    Three Oracle-led campuses and two SoftBank-led sites in Ohio, Texas and New Mexico put the January 2025 pledge of 10 gigawatts within reach by year end.

    Compute & infrastructure

  5. OpenAI raises new funding at a reported $300bn valuation

    The $40bn round, led by SoftBank with Microsoft and others participating, nearly doubled OpenAI's valuation from $157bn six months earlier, with $30bn contingent on completing a for-profit restructuring.

    Money & business

  6. SoftBank leads a $40 billion round at a $300 billion valuation

    The largest private funding round ever recorded, tied to OpenAI completing its corporate restructuring by year end.

    Money & business · Labs & people

  7. SoftBank agrees to acquire Ampere Computing for $6.5bn

    SoftBank's all-cash deal for the Arm-based server-chip maker gave Oracle and Carlyle an exit and deepened SoftBank's push into AI silicon alongside its Arm and Graphcore holdings.

    Compute & infrastructure · Money & business

  8. OpenAI raises $6.6 billion at a $157 billion valuation

    Investors could claw back their money if OpenAI failed to convert to a for-profit structure within two years, and were reportedly asked not to fund Anthropic or xAI.

    Money & business · Labs & people

  9. NVIDIA's $40 billion purchase of Arm collapses

    NVIDIA and SoftBank abandoned the deal after the FTC sued to block it; NVIDIA wrote off a $1.36 billion prepayment and Arm began preparing to list instead.

    Compute & infrastructure · Money & business

  10. NVIDIA agrees to buy Arm for $40 billion

    The $40bn agreed price was $21.5bn in NVIDIA stock and $12bn cash, plus up to $5bn more if Arm hit performance targets; regulators later blocked it.

    Compute & infrastructure · Money & business

Also mentioned in 12 entries

Referenced in passing — SoftBank isn't the main subject of these.