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.

SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $25 billion into ChatGPT owner OpenAI and become the AI firm's largest financial backer, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday, as the Japanese conglomerate continues to expand into the sector.

OpenAI claims to have found evidence that Chinese AI startup DeepSeek secretly used data produced by OpenAI’s technology to improve their own AI models, according to the Financial Times. If true, DeepSeek would be in violation of OpenAI’s terms of service. In a statement, the company said it is actively investigating.

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.

Alibaba claims that its Qwen2.5-Max artificial intelligence model outperformed its rivals at OpenAI, Meta and DeepSeek.

Sam Altman hailed the Chinese firm's low-cost AI model as "impressive" and said OpenAI would accelerate the release of "better models" in response.