{"id":92820,"date":"2025-12-31T14:19:48","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T11:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/?p=92820"},"modified":"2025-12-31T14:20:19","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T11:20:19","slug":"softbank-acquires-11-stake-in-openai-following-41-billion-investment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/softbank-acquires-11-stake-in-openai-following-41-billion-investment\/","title":{"rendered":"SoftBank Acquires 11% Stake in OpenAI Following $41 Billion Investment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group has completed a $41 billion investment in the AI startup OpenAI, reports <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2025\/12\/30\/softbank-openai-investment.html\">CNBC<\/a>. This marks one of the largest private funding rounds in history. <\/p>\n<p>The firm&#8217;s stake in the creator of ChatGPT now stands at 11%.<\/p>\n<p>The investment in OpenAI is part of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son&#8217;s strategy to position the company as a leader in the artificial intelligence market. The Asian entity was among the early investors in Nvidia but sold its entire stake for $5.8 billion in November.<\/p>\n<p>SoftBank initially invested $7.5 billion in OpenAI in April, gathering an additional $11 billion from co-investors. By the end of December, the company directed another $22.5 billion to the startup.<\/p>\n<p>Media <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/reports-openai-plans-1-trillion-ipo\">reports<\/a> suggest that Sam Altman&#8217;s team is preparing for a public listing with a valuation of $1 trillion. Reuters sources anticipate the filing in the second half of 2026.<\/p>\n<p>A successful IPO would be a significant achievement for the startup&#8217;s investors, including Thrive Capital, Abu Dhabi&#8217;s MGX, and Microsoft. The latter has invested a total of $13 billion in OpenAI; at a $1 trillion valuation, Microsoft&#8217;s stake would reach $270 billion.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Advertising in ChatGPT<\/h2>\n<p>Simultaneously, OpenAI is exploring ways to monetize its vast free user base, which has reached 900 million people per week. According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theinformation.com\/articles\/openais-ads-push-starts-taking-shape\">The Information<\/a>, the company is developing advertising models, aiming to make them unobtrusive.<\/p>\n<p>Several integration formats are under consideration:<\/p>\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>contextual recommendations: when users seek advice (for example, on choosing cosmetics), the AI could suggest partner products;<\/li>\n<li>delayed display: ad blocks might appear in a sidebar or during the second stage of a conversation, once the user is engaged.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Currently, only about 5% of active users have a paid subscription. Introducing ads would allow revenue generation from the rest.<\/p>\n<p>The gross margin from this initiative is expected to be comparable to Meta&#8217;s (80\u201385%), with total revenue from the free segment potentially reaching $110 billion by 2030. This would help cover the operational costs of running AI models.<\/p>\n<p>Altman had described advertising as a &#8220;last resort,&#8221; but in October he softened his stance, stating he finds it &#8220;unpleasant but possible.&#8221; The company is already hiring marketing industry veterans and developing commercial features like integration with Shopify and the payment system Stripe.<\/p>\n<p>Back in November, experts <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/leaked-documents-reveal-openais-financial-standing\">concluded<\/a> that the developer of ChatGPT might still be spending more on <span data-descr=\"the process where the model makes inferences and generates responses based on already trained data\" class=\"old_tooltip\">inference<\/span> than it earns. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SoftBank Group has completed a $41 billion investment in AI startup OpenAI. This marks one of the largest private funding rounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92821,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"1","news_style_id":"1","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"SoftBank invests $41 billion in OpenAI, acquiring an 11% stake.","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[438,52,1190,1599],"class_list":["post-92820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-investments","tag-openai","tag-softbank"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"201","promo_type":"1","layout_type":"1","short_excerpt":"SoftBank invests $41 billion in OpenAI, acquiring an 11% stake.","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92820"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92822,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92820\/revisions\/92822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}