SoftBank, OpenAI form 50-50 Japanese venture to push AI services

Japanese technology giant SoftBank Group and OpenAI stepped up their AI partnership Monday, setting up a 50-50 held company called SB OpenAI Japan.

SoftBank Chief Masayoshi Son and OpenAI Chief Sam Altman appeared at an event in Tokyo, talking up their collaboration and inviting Japanese companies to join.

Son, holding a shiny blue crystal ball as a symbolic prop, said its AI service Cristal could be used by companies for planning, marketing, emails and figuring out old source codes.

Cristal will first roll out in Son's own SoftBank Group companies, which include Arm, a semiconductor and software company, and PayPay, an electronic payment service. SoftBank said it plans to spend $3 billion a year to integrate Cristal across its companies.

“This will be super-intelligence for the company. I'm so excited,” Son told reporters and other participants at the Transforming Business through AI event.

Altman talked about the just announced “deep research,” which allows ChatGPT to carry out more complicated tasks, including preparing reports by browsing the web and finding thousands of sources far more quickly than a human worker.

Deep research will be available in Japan in the Japanese language, he said.

“This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies, starting with Japan,” said Altman.

SoftBank and OpenAI, along with Oracle, are part of the Stargate project supported by President Donald Trump, investing up to $500 billion in artificial intelligence infrastructure in the United States.

Son said Stargate will expand into Japan, as well as other nations.

The technology sector has been shaken by the recent announcement from Chinese newcomer DeepSeek that it has come up with a very smart but low-cost AI.