Gone are the days when Openai was a “little startup” that depended on Microsoft’s sponsorship to survive. The first 1,000 million dollars invested by the Redmond giant were essential to develop products such as Chatgpt. Although the flow of money from the creators of Windows has not ceased, the artificial intelligence company (AI) acts with greater autonomy.
OpenAi wins independence. These movements began to become evident when the company raised a plan to leave behind the altruism that once characterized it, with the aim of raising as much money as possible to reach the AGI. It was then that new financing rounds emerged, including one of 6,600 million dollars that managed to close in October last year.
More recently, Stargate, the ambitious project that seeks to consolidate the leadership of the United States in the AI industry, with OpenAi as one of its main actors. Promoted by SoftBank, this initiative led to a change in the historical agreement with Microsoft: Azure ceased to be the exclusive provider in the cloud to become a provider with the right of preference. This means that the firm led by Sam Altman now has the freedom to use the infrastructure of other suppliers or even build and operate their own data centers.
Sam Altman and Masayoshi are new strategic partners. This week, Openai has completed another movement that leaves Microsoft out of the equation. It has been associated with SoftBank to offer AI services in Japan, leaving the door open to expand its presence to the international market. Behind this new initiative is a joint company called SB Openai Japan, which is expected to have 1,000 employees as soon as this year.
The idea is that SB Openai Japan customers can use a new product called “Cristal Intelligence” to start agents that allow them to automate tasks, such as the generation of financial reports, document writing and customer consultation management. The first step will take place at home, with an investment of 3,000 million dollars to implement this system in SoftBank companies.
First at home, then in the world ARM Holdings, acquired by SoftBank in 2016, “will use intelligence crystal to boost innovation and increase productivity throughout the company, strengthening its fundamental role in the progress of AI worldwide.” The softbank corp. matrix, on the other hand, plans to use the system to “automate more than 100 million workflows.”
All this happens at a time when, according to some sources, OpenAi is looking to raise up to 40,000 million dollars, of which 25,000 could come from SoftBank. In addition, this scenario occurs when the Chinese Deepseek company has shaken the AI sector by presenting its most advanced models, intensifying competition in the sector.
Imágenes | TechCrunch (CC BY 2.0) | SoftBank
In WorldOfSoftware | This is one of Deepseek’s secrets: only Chinese talent recruits and pays more than 1.3 million dollars
