PALO ALTO, U.S./TOKYO -- OpenAI's latest $40 billion funding round positions Japan's SoftBank Group as a leading partner for the U.S.-based ChatGPT developer looking to build artificial intelligence infrastructure to compete with such new players as DeepSeek.
The investment announced Tuesday Japan time -- six times the size of the ChatGPT developer's last round in October and an all-time high for an unlisted startup -- doubled its valuation to $300 billion. SoftBank is contributing three-quarters of the total.
