SoftBank and OpenAI join forces to advance AI for business in JapanSoftBank and OpenAI join forces to advance AI for business in Japan

The two companies are targeting Japan's largest corporations for their latest AI collaboration, with SoftBank pledging to spend $3 billion a year to deploy OpenAI technologies across its own subsidiaries.

Gigi Onag, Senior Editor, APAC

February 3, 2025

4 Min Read
Softbank logo sign
(Source: SOPA Images Limited/Alamy Stock Photo)

SoftBank and OpenAI will develop an advanced enterprise AI called Cristal Intelligence for large companies in Japan, with the Japanese tech giant taking the lead as the first customer to deploy the technology at scale.

At a livestreamed event in Tokyo on Monday, the two companies also announced that they will form a 50-50 joint venture company called "SB OpenAI Japan" to market Cristal to the corporate market after its official launch.

"This initiative will not only transform the way SoftBank Group operates but also revolutionize the way companies work in Japan and around the globe. SoftBank Group is fully committed to leveraging the new products across our entire organization and utilize our great partnership with OpenAI to drive the AI revolution forward," said Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group.

The partnership between the two companies will give SoftBank priority access in Japan to the latest and most advanced models developed by OpenAI, including the newly announced AI agent called Deep Research, which performs multi-step research on the Internet for complex tasks. Deep Research analyzes and synthesizes hundreds of online sources to create a comprehensive report at the level of a research analyst.

$3 billion in annual spending on OpenAI technology

Related:SoftBank to build 150MW AI data center at Sharp's Sakai plant

Son said SoftBank will spend US$3 billion (450 billion Japanese yen) a year to deploy OpenAI solutions to all its subsidiaries, including semiconductor firm Arm and electronic payment service provider PayPay.

He added that Cristal will be integrated into all 2,500 systems across SoftBank's subsidiaries.

"There are source codes in these systems, and we will have Cristal to read all these source codes that have been developed over the last 30 years. The programmers who wrote them may have passed away already, and you do not know how to rewrite the codes or how to fix the bugs if there are any.

"Cristal will figure out what the source code means, what kind of functionality the source code has, and where the upgrade should take place, and the language would be rewritten to the latest one," Son said.

He also said Cristal can be used in core business areas including planning, marketing, sales, finance, engineering and legal.

SoftBank plans to automate more than 100 million workflows through the use of Cristal's intelligence.

SoftBank expects that more than 1,000 OpenAI engineers will come to Japan at the end of the year to fine-tune Cristal. A data center for AI learning will be built in Japan, and OpenAI will be the main operator. SoftBank will provide support by building the infrastructure.

In fact, according to media reports last June, SoftBank will build a 50MW AI data center at Sharp's Sakai plant. The AI data center is expected to be fully operational this year.

Targeting large enterprises

Softbank has set its sights on Japan's major corporations as the first adopters of its enterprise AI product.

"Artificial general intelligence (AGI) can be achieved in large enterprise businesses first … as quite a huge amount of money is necessary," Son said, adding that such funds are "only available in large enterprises at the moment."

Son said SoftBank expects to initially deploy Cristal in one company per industry due to limited resources. With each deployment, Cristal will be fine-tuned and customized to meet the needs of each individual enterprise customer.

The enterprise AI product will be sold through the new joint venture company, SB OpenAI Japan, with OpenAI providing advanced AI research, technology and engineering support. For its part, SoftBank will deploy its salesforce and engineers to contribute its extensive Japan-based network, operational expertise and business insights to scale these solutions.

Meanwhile, the job of Arm's compute platform will be to provide the performance, efficiency and scalability needed to support the increasing computational demands of AI agents, from the cloud to the edge.

With Cristal Intelligence, SoftBank hopes to help large companies in Japan to build AI agents that are fully integrated with their own IT systems.

At the livestreamed event in Tokyo, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shared his insights about what AI agents can achieve in a corporate environment.

"Companies will want an agent that can act with as much context and information and power as an employee at the company would have," he said.

"And so, you need to connect it to all the systems. You need to give it all the knowledge base. It needs access to the code. It needs to understand how the company works. And that will take a lot of customization work for each company," he added.

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About the Author

Gigi Onag

Senior Editor, APAC, Light Reading

Gigi Onag is Senior Editor, APAC, Light Reading. She has been a technology journalist for more than 15 years, covering various aspects of enterprise IT across Asia-Pacific.

She started with regional IT publications under CMP Asia (now Informa), including Asia Computer Weekly, Intelligent Enterprise Asia and Network Computing Asia and Teledotcom Asia. This was followed by stints with Computerworld Hong Kong and sister publications FutureIoT and FutureCIO. She had contributed articles to South China Morning Post, TechTarget and PC Market among others.

She interspersed her career as a technology editor with a brief sojourn into public relations before returning to journalism, joining the editorial team of Mix Magazine, a MICE publication and its sister publication Business Traveller Asia Pacific.

Gigi is based in Hong Kong and is keen to delve deeper into the region’s wide wild world of telecoms.

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