SoftBank and OpenAI Unveil ‘Cristal intelligence’: A $3 Billion AI Product suite

SoftBank and OpenAI collab

US firm OpenAI has partnered with the Japanese investment holding company SoftBank to develop an AI service for businesses.

The collaboration has given way to a corporate AI offering called Cristal intelligence, giving companies marketing, planning and email automation, and legacy code training capabilities.

SoftBank Group said it will spend $3 billion rolling out the technology in its own companies first, before offering the service to external clients.

The two companies have also set up a joint venture firm SB OpenAI Japan to market Cristal intelligence and Open AI products to Japanese companies.

As part of the partnership, SoftBank Group companies, such as SoftBank Corp. and UK-founded AI chip designer Arm, will be granted priority access in Japan to the latest products from OpenAI.

Arm said it will use Cristal intelligence to boost productivity, whilst SoftBank Corp. said it will automate over 100 million workflows and provide data training to build AI agents.

News of the joint partnership comes shortly after SoftBank and OpenAI announced they were a part of the U.S.’s Stargate initiative – a $500 billion innovation project backed by President Donald Trump. The project plans to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure in the U.S. by 2029. Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank, will serve as the chairman of the venture.

Commenting on the partnership, Masayoshi said the alliance with OpenAI, along with the new products, will ‘drive the AI revolution forward’. “This initiative will not only transform the way SoftBank Group operates but also revolutionise the way companies work in Japan and around the globe,” Masayoshi continued.

The development and adoption of ‘AI agents’

SoftBank Group said the implementation of Cristal intelligence is a part of a wider effort to develop the use of agentic AI in the workplace.

AI agents, which involve AI doing work independently after being handed a task, are the next step in the evolution of AI.

On its website, SoftBank described how Cristal intelligence could enable the company to “lay the groundwork for even more advanced systems that can learn and adapt to any enterprise’s needs”. The holding group said: “OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp., Arm and SoftBank Corp. share a vision to enable AI agents to help make every knowledge worker more effective and solve even more complex problems”.

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