Why India Should Really Really Care About OpenAI Teaming Up With SoftBank

A man holding a purple crystal ball. What is this? One of those superhero movie announcement gatherings? Is another former Marvel superhero actor going to be revealed as a new villain? Actually, it's Masayoshi Son.

You know that name and his company SoftBank. You know the name Samuel Altman and OpenAI. Imagine if they joined forces. Imagine if these Avengers assembled. SoftBank knows the business and OpenAI knows the chemistry. That might be pretty cool.?

And in February 2025, you might?see them team up for the Japanese market. That being said, they did announce something for the US under Trump 2.0: $500 billion in AI infrastructure.?

But, here's another one: a?50-50 JV between the two goliaths is said to have been announced. And for what? To deliver advanced AI solutions to businesses. So, it's about enterprise solutions. About $3 billion would be spent by SoftBank to deploy OpenAI's solutions for the conglomerate's companies. This JV would be called "SB OpenAI Japan" and okay, it may not be the most inspired or creative of names, but, they may have just used ChatGPT to come up with a name and gone with the most basic one.

So, the goal is said to be to provide support, in the form of a superintelligence called Cristal, to these companies by analyzing their data, reports, emails and meetings in real-time. Want some help with your financial reporting? Need assistance with your customer service? Want some AI agents to lend a hand? Could data centres be afoot? You got it, dude!

If you wanted a bit of extra vindication to support the idea that non-AI businesses are taking AI integration pretty seriously, this may be your sign.?

Take one of the companies that SoftBank owns: Arm Holdings, which is a Brit semiconductor and software design company. Could this make Britain a frontrunner in the semiconductor space? And it's interesting this comes on the heels of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, which dominated the headlines for its efficient and comparatively cost-effective AI model.

So, something like this might be more for Japan. Imagine if a similar OpenAI x Tata or OpenAI x Reliance partnership were to be formed. Even if that's fiction - for now - maybe, it's time for Indian conglomerates and AI startups to move past experimental AI projects to full-scale implementation. Or has it already happened but it flew under the radar and we didn't pay attention? Are any Indian companies ready with an AI model that's as good that could be integrated into the core strategies of other companies beyond just having support functions? Maybe, there are some Indian companies that have small-scale chatbots or individual automation tools, but maybe, not the full-fledged kind. Does the real goldmine lie in infrastructure, not applications? Or would it only matter if Indian AI founders can develop solutions for Fortune 500 companies and not just MSMEs? What's the metric?

India may be considered the IT back-office to the rest of the world for better or for worse, but if SoftBank's AI-powered workflow penetrates SoftBank's IT companies, India's IT space might be demoted. Can an Infosys or a Wipro develop an AI-powered enterprise suite as cool as OpenAI or DeepSeek, while still being able to answer what happened when a man with two shopping bags stood in front of tanks close to 40 years ago?

Maybe, there'd be startups and companies in India yearning to have AI infrastructure in their processes, because if SoftBank cares, then other VCs and PEs may care about this, too. Or, maybe there could be renewed focus on further developing India's AI hardware ecosystem, because computing infrastructure might be a bottleneck people sweep under the rug either intentionally or unintentionally.

Perhaps, AI is no longer a feature, it's the product. There could even be industry-specific AI, if that works.

If Indian AI startups are not as aggressive or ambitious, would India end up just becoming consumers of global AI products?