OpenAI expands in Asia with Kakao and Softbank partnerships

OpenAI and South Korean tech firm Kakao, developers of the popular KakaoTalk messaging app, have entered into a strategic partnership that will see ChatGPT functionality integrated into KakaoTalk while providing OpenAI with valuable training and user behavior data. This news comes just a day after Japan’s SoftBank pledged $3 billion to deploy OpenAI technologies across its various business ventures.

The Kakao agreement will cover three initial projects between the two companies. First, they plan to develop a Korean-language assistant similar to Siri or Google’s Assistant but built atop OpenAI’s tech. Second, Kakao employees will gain access to ChatGPT Enterprise in their workflows and third, the aforementioned KakaoTalk integration.

The SoftBank deal is similarly structured. SoftBank and OpenAI have agreed to collaborate on the development of an enterprise AI they’re calling “Cristal intelligence,” which “will securely integrate the systems and data of individual enterprises in a way that is customized specifically for each company,” according to the announcement release. SoftBank has also pledged $3 billion annually to roll out ChatGPT Enterprise across its various subsidiary businesses and integrate Cristal intelligence at scale.

“Korea is a very impressive market,” Altman said at the announcement press conference, co-led by Kakao CEO Shina Chung. “The adoption of AI in Korea is remarkably advanced. Considering various industries, from energy to semiconductors and internet companies, there is a very strong environment conducive to applying AI. It is a market that is extremely important to us and is growing rapidly.” Even more valuable to OpenAI than these various financial investments, is its newfound access to Korean-and Japanese-language data on which to train its large language models.

This isn’t the first time that OpenAI and SoftBank have joined forces. In January, the two companies (as part of a larger consortium) announced the ambitious Stargate Project, which seeks to invest as much as $500 billion over the next four years in building out AI data centers and power generation plants to support OpenAI’s never-ending growth strategy. Of course, that deal could be in peril given the meteoric rise of China’s DeepSeek AI app, which offers parity performance to OpenAI’s GPT-4o and o1 models at a small fraction of their required price and electrical power.