"This initiative will not only transform the way SoftBank Group operates but also revolutionize the way companies work in Japan and around the globe," Masayoshi Son (seen on Jan. 21 at the White House in Washington, DC), chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., said Monday. Photo by Aaron Schwartz/UPI |
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Feb. 3 (UPI) -- SoftBank inked a $3 billion deal with OpenAI in a joint venture to market OpenAI tech in Japan with its newly-minuted "Cristal Intelligence" suite of tools.
"This initiative will not only transform the way SoftBank Group operates but also revolutionize the way companies work in Japan and around the globe," Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., said Monday in a release.
SoftBank's yearly $3 billion commitment to utilize OpenAI's tech will be for itself and its subsidiary companies.
The two companies dubbed their joint venture as "SB OpenAI Japan" to market OpenAI's tech exclusively to major Japanese companies.
It will be owned equally by OpenAI and a company established by SoftBank and consolidated under SoftBank Corp.
Meanwhile, SoftBank will use a digital suite of branded tools labeled as "Cristal Intelligence" for all its OpenAI products.
The deal will give SoftBank and its subsidiaries access to ChatGPT Enterprise, OpenAI's API, customized models and its Operator platform, which is a product described as "an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you," like planning a vacation or filling out a number of forms.
"This partnership with SoftBank will accelerate our vision for bringing transformative AI to some of the world's most influential companies," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in the release. "Starting with Japan."
OpenAI, last valued by private investors at $157 billion, is in negotiations to raise up to $40 billion in funding by SoftBank at a potential valuation of more than $300 billion, according to CNBC.
On Monday, Son stated during a live streamed event that artificial general intelligence -- which is when AI will equal or surpass human intellect on a number of tasks -- could be a reality in less than 10 years.
"AGI can be achieved in large enterprise businesses first," Son stated via translator. He added that in order to achieve AGI, "quite the huge amount of money is necessary" and that such money is "only available in large enterprises at the moment."
According to SoftBank, the executives in its live streamed audience represented companies that collectively accounted for more than half of Japan's total market capitalization.
This new deal also includes access to OpenAI's latest "Deep Research" tool to carry out multiple steps on the Internet.
The British chip designer company acquired by SoftBank in 2016, Arm, will also use OpenAI tools to "boost productivity across the company," according to the release.
Meanwhile, an Arm company official says its partnership with OpenAI and SoftBank will drive "unprecedented productivity" across the global technology ecosystem.
"We are at the forefront of the AI revolution, and our high-performance, energy-efficient compute is going to be critical to advancing the Cristal intelligence," Arm CEO Rene Haas said Monday.