SoftBank commits to joint venture with OpenAI [Video]

SoftBank has committed to spending $3 billion per year for itself and its subsidiaries to use OpenAI’s tech, according to a joint announcement on Monday.

The two also announced a new joint venture, billed as “SB OpenAI Japan,” which will market OpenAI’s enterprise tech exclusively to major companies in Japan.

The deal will give SoftBank and its subsidiaries access to ChatGPT Enterprise, OpenAI’s API, custom models and agent products such as Operator, which it describes as “an agent that can go to the web to perform tasks for you,” such as planning vacations and filling out forms. It also will include access to OpenAI’s newest agent feature, once it launches: a tool called “Deep Research” which OpenAI says will be able to conduct multistep analysis on the web. SoftBank branded all the OpenAI products it will use as a suite of tools “Cristal Intelligence.”

Arm, the British chip designer acquired by …