SoftBank to Pay $3 Billion a Year to Develop AI Agents for Companies in Its Portfolio

In a move that could be seen as SoftBank’s latest attempt to generate significant profits, the Japanese investment firm has announced a partnership with OpenAI to develop and market a new product called Cristal Intelligence. This joint venture aims to create AI agents that can complete tasks without human intervention, with the potential to automate over 100 million workflows among SoftBank’s companies.

Cristal Intelligence: A New AI Agent Development Platform

SoftBank and OpenAI have formed a joint venture to develop and market Cristal Intelligence, which will build on OpenAI’s latest reasoning models to create AI agents that can perform tasks autonomously. The new system will be trained on corporate customers’ data and customized for their specific needs, with at least initial marketing focused on major companies in Japan.

Automating Workflows and Creating New Value

SoftBank plans to automate over 100 million workflows among its companies, which could include generating financial reports, drafting documents, and managing customer inquiries. The company believes that by automating and autonomizing all of its tasks and workflows, it will transform its business and services, and create new value.

A New Era for AI Development

The Cristal Intelligence system will create similar agents to OpenAI’s agentic tool Operator, which has already been launched as a preview for top-tier subscribers. However, the new system will be tailored to corporate customers’ specific needs and will be marketed exclusively to major companies in Japan.

SoftBank’s History of Investing in AI

SoftBank, led by Chairman Masayoshi Son, has built a strong reputation in the tech venture space with early investments in companies like Uber, DoorDash, and Alibaba. However, in recent years, its bets have been notably less successful, particularly when it comes to transforming the nature of work. The company has lost billions on investments such as WeWork and Zume, which promised to automate and disrupt the creation of pizzas.

Deepening Financial Stake in OpenAI

The Cristal Intelligence partnership deepens SoftBank’s financial stake in OpenAI, with reports suggesting that the company is in talks to invest $25 billion directly into OpenAI. SoftBank has already announced a collaboration called Stargate, another joint venture with OpenAI that plans to spend $500 billion over the next four years to build out AI infrastructure like data centers.

Challenges Ahead

The Cristal Intelligence partnership comes amid a lot of hype about the potential of AI agents, but also as breakthroughs by the Chinese company DeepSeek have raised questions about whether cheaper, more efficient AI developers will undercut OpenAI, which is losing money on its most expensive subscription plan due to the cost of running the technology.