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The story
US-based OpenAI has reportedly been considering an additional funding round of around $30 billion (roughly ¥4.7 trillion), ahead of rival Anthropic’s initial public offering (IPO) set for mid-November. The company is said to be in repeated talks with existing shareholders such as SoftBank Group, as well as sovereign wealth funds. On 5ch, posters repeatedly raised doubts over whether such an enormous sum could ever actually be recouped, along with concerns about delays in data center construction and the pattern of pouring ever more resources into AI’s “scaling law.” Many also wondered just how far SoftBank Group would go in providing further funding.
[Silicon Valley — Masaharu Ban] It has been learned that US-based OpenAI is considering an additional funding round of roughly $30 billion (about ¥4.7 trillion).
Reuters reported on the 19th that the company is rushing to secure funding ahead of rival Anthropic’s initial public offering (IPO), expected around mid-November.
According to Reuters, OpenAI is in talks with existing shareholders such as SoftBank Group regarding the additional funding round, and has held repeated meetings with multiple investment funds, including sovereign wealth funds.
Source: nikkei.com / Read the original article here
What people said
There are about 8.4 billion people on Earth right now — if everyone just chips in 560 yen, it pays for itself. No sweat, no sweat.
Going into next year there's probably going to be a shakeout, and failed hyperscalers will get bought up cheap by the competition, leading to an oligopoly.
Well, it's already looking like this lol
"Storm clouds gather over the $650 billion AI data center boom — nearly half of US projects delayed or canceled"
2026-06-09
The four major tech giants plan to pour $650 billion (about ¥104.1 trillion) into AI data centers in 2026 alone, but of the 140 projects slated for completion in the US this year, nearly half have been forced into delays or cancellations.
You do know OpenAI and Musk hate each other's guts, right? lol
AI is scary
Gross. Got chills.
You can't skip town on just 100 million yen… At their real-world cost of living, that's more like 30 million, so it's even more of a pittance.
AI's "scaling law" really is a dumb rule when you think about it — the more you pour in, the more accurate the answers get.
And yet AI companies are chasing it with reckless abandon.
Those resources are electricity and minerals though — finite, and it's threatening human livelihoods itself.
Whether AI can become something greater than humanity,
or not.
At the very least, in another 10 years four-legged robots walking through city streets will just be normal.
What humanity needs to do is make sure there's zero chance of a Terminator-style robot showing up and starting a war with us.
Why does it cost that much money?
Because greedy free users are hammering it like crazy.
But if you lock them out, you end up with undertrained models or a sudden swing into over-investment in infrastructure — damned if you do, damned if you don't.
Are they out of their minds?
Early YouTube also just streamed videos for free with no ads, and people doubted it could ever turn a profit (and in Japan, early Yahoo Auctions had no fees either).
That's basically today's free AI services.
Something that's inherently expensive gets opened up for free just to grab market share early.
Yahoo Auctions fees might end up being 50% of the sale price!
They probably need a massive supply of cutting-edge GPUs every few months.
If you stop, everything becomes obsolete all at once.
It's a capital-spending game of chicken.
Whoever stops first loses, and everything they've poured in up to that point goes to waste.
Get ahead of the other AIs and you're rolling in it.
Fail, and it all gets dismantled.
I bet there are tons of people invested in this, but they should probably wake up soon.
I mean, I saw news that China might have overtaken them — is that really okay?
Isn't that why the stock crashed?
And on top of that, the rivals are all mega-corporations locked in an investment arms race.
The money merry-go-round's probably going to crash once and wipe everything out completely, I bet.
If you're holding 10 million yen of junk bonds like that, your overall portfolio's probably around 300 million, so it should be diversified, right?
Re: #180
Even if you do take it over…
Sure, they're a bunch of idiots who just kept bloating their software without ever optimizing memory or code, but if you can buy it cheap and sell it high, that's a win.
In reality, for actual practical use you don't need an AI that's smarter than necessary at all.
But the market's still dreaming about AI, so there's still a shot at it.
That's assuming you can buy it cheap.
Since it's privately held, the options are limited, and if Japan ended up buying it, "TACO" (a jab at Trump as someone who "always chickens out") would probably lose it — who knows how this plays out.
Buying up a company after it went rogue and blew itself up seems pretty risky to me, though.
Background and key points of this discussion
OpenAI has already gone through several large funding rounds this year, and the fact that it’s reportedly considering yet another one right before rival Anthropic’s IPO underscores just how enormous the AI industry’s appetite for capital has become. Opinions in the thread split over how to view the “recoverability” of such a massive investment. Many posters were skeptical, pointing to reports that nearly half of planned US data center projects have been delayed or canceled, while others argued this is an investment aimed at grabbing early market share through free access — much like early YouTube. Worth noting: the original article only reports that SoftBank Group is one of the parties OpenAI is in talks with; it does not say the company has decided to provide additional funding. Missing that distinction makes the story sound further along than it actually is.
*This article is an excerpt and summary of the 5ch (Newsplus) thread “[Breaking] OpenAI Seeking Additional ¥4.7 Trillion in Funding, in Talks with SoftBank Group and Others.”
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