SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI as part of a broader partnership that could see the Japanese conglomerate spend more than $40 OpenAI is in talks to raise up to $25 billion from SoftBank amid DeepSeek shock.

The biggest investment so far in the ChatGPT maker would help cover its commitment to the Stargate AI infrastructure venture.

Japan's SoftBank is in talks to invest as much as $25 billion into ChatGPT maker OpenAI, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

OpenAI itself has been accused of building ChatGPT by inappropriately accessing content it didn't have the rights to.

DeepSeek is causing havoc throughout the AI industry. U.S.-based tech companies that have heavily invested in AI saw their stocks take a tumble this week after the China-based startup released a new AI model on par with OpenAI's latest model, yet much cheaper to train — plus, DeepSeek made it free and open source.

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI research lab, has released an advanced AI model which rivals leading models from OpenAI. The DeepSeek-R1 model can perform complicated mathematical reasoning, code generation, and more with fewer resources than its American competitors.