SoftBank faces an AI test with a potential $30 billion follow-on bet on OpenAI, what does this mean for AI cryptos?

SoftBank is reportedly weighing up to $30 billion more for OpenAI in a $100 billion round, valuing the AI ​​company at nearly $830 billion, deepening their Stargate data center and SB Energy.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, SoftBank Group is in talks to invest up to an additional $30 billion in OpenAI report published last week.

CoinGecko’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) category currently has a total market cap of approximately $31.6 billion, with approximately $2.4 billion in 24-hour trading volume and a positive daily move of 2.7%, making it a meaningful but still niche segment of the roughly multi-trillion dollar crypto market.

While the multi-billion dollar deal could mean big money for OpenAI, the crypto sector is fragmented across subsectors like AI agents, data and infrastructure, and application layer tokens, with capital rapidly rotating between stories like decentralized GPU networks, agent frameworks, and biometric identity as new use cases and partnerships have emerged.

Details of the historic deal between OpenAI and SoftBank emerge

The potential investment could be part of a funding round that would raise $100 billion and value the artificial intelligence company at about $830 billion, the report said.

The additional investment would follow SoftBank’s December commitment of $41 billion, which gave the Japanese conglomerate an 11% stake in OpenAI, according to the report.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has pursued an aggressive strategy to strengthen the company’s position in the artificial intelligence sector amid increasing competition from rivals including Alphabet, the report said.

OpenAI is facing rising costs for training and running its AI models, driven by the rapid adoption and launch of increasingly sophisticated AI systems, industry analysts said.

Both SoftBank and OpenAI are investors in Stargate, a $500 billion project to build AI data centers designed to support large-scale training and inference operations. Project leaders have stated that the infrastructure is critical to U.S. AI competitiveness against China.

SoftBank declined to comment on the discussions when contacted by the Wall Street Journal.

The conversations signal the company’s continued commitment to OpenAI, which has become a central part of its AI strategy, the report said. Other Vision Fund transactions have slowed as the company focuses its resources on the OpenAI investment, according to the report.

OpenAI and SoftBank deal, what does this mean for AI cryptos?

Worldcoin (WLD): Biometric ID + AI top

Worldcoin’s WLD (WLD) token has soared on reports that OpenAI could use iris-based authentication for a bot-free social platform, making it a high-beta proxy for AI identity demand.

• Price Action: WLD recently rose more than 15% in a single session as traders factored in potential integration and renewed speculative flows into AI-ID plays.
• Structural driver: If OpenAI or other major AI platforms adopt Worldcoin’s proof-of-personhood rails, WLD could see continued on-chain activity rather than one-off news spikes.
• Risk: Regulatory pressure around biometrics, privacy and data localization could hinder or slow network growth despite the power of the story.

Fetch.ai (FET): autonomous agents and AI middleware

Fetch.ai’s FET (FET) token follows the adoption of its agentic compute stack, where autonomous economic agents automate tasks and perform on-chain transactions.

• Price Action: FET tends to outperform in AI risk phases as investors move into picks-and-shovels narratives around agent frameworks and on-chain AI services.
• Structural driver: Actual use of Fetch agents in logistics, DeFi automation or data markets can translate into recurring demand for FET to pay for transactions and services.
• Risk: Competition from other AI middleware and L2s building native agent frameworks could dilute the story if Fetch fails to win visible enterprise or ecosystem integrations.

Render (RNDR): GPU liquidity for AI

Render’s RNDR Token (RNDR) is deployed for GPU scarcity, giving holders access to decentralized rendering and demand for AI computing.

• Price Action: RNDR tends to rebound alongside AI chip names and major model launches as markets bet on continued GPU bottlenecks and the need for distributed rendering power.
• Structural driver: As AI training and inference workloads continue to fragment across clouds and DePIN networks, Render’s market model can translate higher GPU usage into RNDR demand.
• Risk: Competition from centralized cloud providers and other DePIN GPU networks could squeeze margins and weaken the link between AI capex explosions and RNDR performance over time.