Is SoftBank still backing OpenAI?

Is SoftBank still backing OpenAI?(wheresyoured.at)

77 points by samuli 293 days ago | 14 comments

Maybe I have different priors than the author but I never saw the $500b Stargate as anything "real" in the first place. It seemed pretty obvious this was a way to give an authoritarian president with a love for big numbers and a vindictive streak a win while OpenAI was taking away attention from him.

Same as Foxconn's LCD factory.

I don't like it, I don't respect the companies that do it, but I also understand it.

fundad 293 days ago | |

What’s significant is professional journalists at publications with the resources to vet the information didn’t. They just performed stenography because they didn’t want a militia at their doors. Pretty bleak.

ashvardanian 293 days ago |

$500B is a huge headline number—even by the standards of the world’s largest lossy compression competition. But I don’t think anyone remotely familiar with the space ever expected the number to be accurate, or even cared that much about the total budget. It’s mainly a signal of political will, I assume. Mega-projects always take longer than expected and come with unpredictable costs. That said, OpenAI still has an edge over the competition, and I doubt there are many team better at raising capital than theirs.

iFire 293 days ago |

It would make sense to sell when openai still has leadership and diversify

jpppj 293 days ago |

I can't help but wonder if the reason most comments are about Trump and not Sam Altman, suggesting the usefulness of such an unreasonable sum, isn't related to the domain this website is run on?

The trillions, or $500B, etc claims from Altman were obviously ridiculous from the start. The fact that Son would latch on isn't surprising given his performance outside of a few early investments. The fact that Trump would latch on isn't surprising given politics is about media making.

This is all on Altman right?

eightysixfour 292 days ago | |

No, it has nothing to do with this being hacker news and everything to do with us being realists. Sam is overselling, we all "get" that at this point.

Trump is what we're talking about because this was such a transparent attempt for OpenAI to give Trump a talking point/win around AI in the US. Everyone knows if you are big enough and don't give him a win, he'll eventually come after you, so they're just playing the game. None of us like the game, but we're honest that it exists.

sharadov 293 days ago |

This is becoming standard operating procedure for this administration - talk big investments with companies, trade and tariff deals with Japan,EU. All this is talk, aimed at pleasing the MAGA crowd.

And they have learned that all that Trump loves are deals. As long as they talk big, he laps it up and so does his base.

paulryanrogers 293 days ago | |

Trump is becoming much like his father when the latter developed dementia: going through the motions of fake work to please himself alone. Meanwhile others run the actual organization.

gsibble 293 days ago |

This is a wild story. It's all just marketing sleight of hand. Kind of pathetic.

Havoc 293 days ago |

Maybe Altman wasn’t crazy enough for SB

bgwalter 293 days ago |

Naturally they back off. Trump and OpenAI wanted the "$500 billion" headline and they got that. What is happening afterwards does not matter.

gsibble 293 days ago | |

I think Altman and Softbank wanted it more.

bgwalter 293 days ago | | |

The Stargate Project was announced in the White House in the early period where Trump promoted multiple deals like the Saudi $1 trillion investment in the US.

Having Softbank announce this in the White House is absolutely one of the headline successes that Trump thrives on.