There was more to the $500 billion investment that Softbank had led into building OpenAI’s datacenters.
Softbank and OpenAI have partnered up in Japan. In a joint announcement made by Softbank Chairman Masayoshi Son and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the duo announced that they would create something called “Crystal Intelligence”, an enterprise AI solution which would integrate with all systems and data of individual companies, and would be tailored to their specific needs. Crystal Intelligence will reportedly autonomously analyze and optimize all system source code that a company has developed over the past 30 years.
To this end, OpenAI and SoftBank Group have agreed to establish a joint venture, SB OpenAI Japan, which will have exclusive rights to market Crystal Intelligence to Japan’s leading companies. SB OpenAI Japan will be equally owned by OpenAI and a SoftBank Group holding company, and will operate as a subsidiary of SoftBank Corp. It will focus on adapting AI agents to the needs of Japanese enterprises, while building globally scalable AI models. SB OpenAI Japan will exclusively market Cristal Intelligence to major Japanese enterprises.
As part of the agreement, SoftBank Group Corporation will also invest $3 billion annually to deploy OpenAI’s solutions across all SoftBank Group companies. SoftBank Group companies — including Arm and SoftBank Corp. — will gain priority access to OpenAI’s latest and most advanced AI models in Japan.
The companies have already laid out plans on how they plan to leverage this partnership. They say that Arm will leverage Crystal Intelligence to accelerate innovation, enhance productivity, and play a critical role in the global AI ecosystem. SoftBank Corp. will automate over 100 million tasks, promote business process automation, and establish a secure environment for additional AI training and fine-tuning.
“We are thrilled to roll out Crystal Intelligence, a cutting-edge AI solution tailored for enterprises,” said Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son. “This initiative will bring significant innovation not only to SoftBank Group but also to companies in Japan and worldwide. SoftBank Group is fully committed to leveraging this new product and driving the AI revolution through our strong partnership with OpenAI,” he added.
“Our partnership with SoftBank accelerates our vision and enables us to deliver groundbreaking AI to the world’s most influential companies, starting with Japan,” said OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“Arm is excited to collaborate with OpenAI and SoftBank Group to set new industry benchmarks and enhance global AI productivity. We envision a future where AI agents, powered by Arm-based platforms, exist everywhere—from the edge to the cloud. Our high-performance, energy-efficient compute technology will play a key role in the evolution of Cristal Intelligence,” said Arm CEO Rene Haas.
It’s a pretty wide-ranging deal, and seems to be an effort by Softbank to bring Japan to the forefront of AI innovation. Japan has several prominent AI researchers, but hasn’t yet come up with many cutting-edge AI models. This partnership with OpenAI will not only bring OpenAI’s latest products to Japan, but also create a new product named “Crystal Intelligence”, which the new joint venture will market to Japanese companies. It remains to be seen how the partnership plays out, but it’s now apparent that Softbank’s interest in OpenAI went beyond funding the building of its datacenters — it wants to be involved on the consumer side as well.