The Japanese investment firm is entwining its fortunes with a company that expects to lose billions of dollars for years to come, in the hope that it will emerge as the leader in the AI race.

PALO ALTO, U.S./TOKYO -- OpenAI's latest $40 billion funding round positions Japan's SoftBank Group as a leading partner for the U.S.-based ChatGPT developer looking to build artificial intelligence infrastructure to compete with such new players as DeepSeek.

SoftBank which is leading the deal will initially be investing $7.5 billion in the company along with $2.5 billion from an investor syndicate.