SoftBank group companies — including investees such as PayPay and LY Corp. — will collectively spend US$3 billion ($4.1 billion) a year on the US firm’s tools.
SoftBank Group and OpenAI will create a joint venture to develop and sell AI services to businesses across Japan, establishing one of the broadest efforts yet to sell the fast-growing startup’s tools to enterprise customers outside of the US.
Billionaire SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son and OpenAI chief Sam Altman took to a Tokyo stage Monday to outline their 50-50 collaboration. The venture, which will operate under SoftBank’s telecom arm SoftBank Corp, will hire 1,000 people from SoftBank to market OpenAI products to industries from automakers to retailers.
