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July 10, 2026
 

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OPENAI

Some tech titans like Elon Musk envision an AI-driven future of “socialism from above,” where machines generate abundance while the means of production remain in the hands of a wealthy few.
COMMENTARY / World
Jan 12, 2026
Artificial intelligence, robots and Silicon Valley’s top-down socialism
The architects of AI are open about the fact that they are creating systems whose success in generating material abundance could also obliterate large swaths of the labor market.
A Samsung Electronics sign at the IFA Consumer Electronics and Home Appliances trade fair in Berlin on Sept. 5, 2024. Investors are increasingly asking if we’re living through another financial bubble that’s destined to burst.
BUSINESS / Tech
Jan 5, 2026
Is the AI boom a bubble waiting to pop? Here’s what history says.
Investors are increasingly asking if we’re living through another financial bubble that’s destined to burst.
Having made colossal profits as well as losses on previous investments, founder Masayoshi Son has pivoted SoftBank toward artificial intelligence.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 31, 2025
SoftBank lifts OpenAI stake to 11% with $41 billion investment
SoftBank had announced in April its planned investment of up to $40 billion in Open AI, and on Wednesday it said that the second tranche of $22.5 billion was completed.
While China has made rapid advances in artificial intelligence, its structural constraints remain significant.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 23, 2025
Why China can’t win the AI-led industrial revolution
No industrial revolution has ever emerged outside advanced democratic capitalism, and that is no accident.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son attends an event to pitch AI for businesses in Tokyo in February.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 20, 2025
SoftBank races to fulfill $22.5 billion funding pledge to OpenAI by year-end
The “all-in” bet on OpenAI is among the biggest yet by SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son, as he seeks to improve his firm’s position in the race for artificial intelligence.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at a data center in Abilene, Texas, in September. During a recent lunch with media editors in New York, Altman said developing AI systems for companies could be a $100 billion market.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 19, 2025
Business leaders agree AI is the future. They just wish it worked right now.
So far, the vast majority of businesses are struggling to realize a meaningful return on their artificial intelligence investments.
Generative AI models are trained on publicly accessible creative content yet offer little to the artists, musicians, coders and others who produce it.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 18, 2025
AI thrives on unpaid creative labor
Generative AI models are trained on publicly accessible creative content yet offer little to the artists, musicians, coders and others who produce it.
OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman in San Francisco in June
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 16, 2025
Despite soaring valuation, uncertainty clouds the outlook for OpenAI
“Big Short” investor Michael Burry has likened OpenAI to Netscape, which ruled the browser market in the 1990s only to lose to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.
OpenAI has announced changes to make ChatGPT better at recognizing and responding to different ways that people may express mental distress.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 12, 2025
OpenAI and Microsoft sued over murder-suicide blamed on ChatGPT
The case is the first to blame OpenAI for a homicide.
Keio University President Kohei Ito (left) and OpenAI Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon sign a memorandum of understanding on Tuesday in Tokyo.
BUSINESS / Tech
Dec 10, 2025
Keio and OpenAI sign MOU on integration of AI into university
The maker of ChatGPT will work closely with the Japanese institution on a range of projects.
Artificial intelligence holds promise for preserving endangered languages, but without meaningful community involvement, speakers of indigenous and regional dialects risk further marginalization as their languages vanish from the digital world.
COMMENTARY / World
Dec 9, 2025
Can AI save dying languages?
A report from Stanford’s Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence earlier this year found that most major large-language models, or LLMs, underperform in non-English.
Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group, speaks during the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute Priority Asia conference in Tokyo on Monday.
BUSINESS / Companies
Dec 2, 2025
SoftBank’s Son ‘cried’ about Nvidia stake sale to fund AI bets
Son, addressing for the first time the surprise disclosure that SoftBank had unloaded its stake in the world’s most valuable company, also slammed talk of an AI investment bubble.
SoftBank shares have plunged around 40% since late October as it sits at the forefront of a global AI selloff.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 26, 2025
SoftBank’s 40% slide from peak shows worry over giant OpenAI bet
Growing unease over frothy artificial intelligence valuations is weighing on shares of SoftBank Group, which traders increasingly view as a proxy for privately held OpenAI.
Google is one of the few companies that produces what the industry calls the full stack in computing, and it has a data goldmine for constructing AI models from its search index, Android phones and YouTube.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 26, 2025
Google, the sleeping giant in global AI race, now ‘fully awake’
Google’s newest multipurpose model, Gemini 3, won immediate praise for its capabilities in reasoning and coding, as well as niche tasks that have tripped up AI chatbots.
Japanese and South Korean tech stocks tumbled Friday, with Softbank falling over 10% amid AI bubble concerns.
BUSINESS / Markets
Nov 21, 2025
Asia tech stocks tumble on AI bubble fears
Seoul’s benchmark Kospi index was trading down nearly 4%, while Tokyo’s Nikkei index shed 2.3% in morning trade.
Japan must act quickly to protect anime creators through stronger labor rights, transparency and fair compensation as AI threatens to exploit the industry’s creative work.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Nov 18, 2025
Will artificial intelligence turn Japan’s ‘irreplaceable treasures’ into slop?
AI’s threat gives Japan a second chance to do right by the workers propping up the $21 billion industry.
The Munich court found that OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, was not entitled to use song lyrics to train its artificial intelligence without licenses, and that the artists who wrote them are entitled to compensation.
BUSINESS / Tech
Nov 12, 2025
German court rules against OpenAI in copyright case
OpenAI has faced court cases in the U.S. regarding their ChatGPT, but the challenge in Germany is the first major case of its kind in Europe, a German music rights group said.
SoftBank Group’s Japanese mobile unit and OpenAI are set to launch AI services for local companies next year.
BUSINESS / Companies
Nov 5, 2025
SoftBank chases actual revenue with OpenAI in corporate Japan
SoftBank Corp. and Open AI are said to be still fine-tuning the products the two companies are co-developing for Japanese enterprises.
OpenAI is considering filing with securities regulators as soon as the second half of 2026, some people familiar with the matter said.
BUSINESS / Tech
Oct 30, 2025
OpenAI lays groundwork for juggernaut IPO at up to $1 trillion valuation
The company appears eager to tap public markets now that a complex restructuring that reduces its reliance on Microsoft is complete.
OpenAI's latest blunder over its GPT-5 model's supposed solution to unsolved math problems highlights the gap between the current state of AI, which excels at pattern matching, and promises of superintelligence.
COMMENTARY
Oct 28, 2025
OpenAI’s latest ‘breakthrough’ is a sobering reality check
The company’s latest model had simply scraped answers off the internet and regurgitated them as its own.
Japanese payment processor’s collapse hits banks and restaurants
Zentoshin served around 200,000 shops, many of which rely on early payments to maintain cash flow, raising concerns over their financial stability following the disruption.
Japan needs caregivers. Young Indians are answering the call.
Young people in India's northeast are increasingly studying Japanese in hopes of building new lives and careers in Japan.
Trump says ‘Japan’ instead of Iran at meeting in Ankara
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference during a NATO leaders' summit in Ankara on Wednesday.
Wakatakakage injury casts pall over July meet, but potential new stars loom
Nicholas Tarasenko trains at Minato stable in August 2024.
Osaka trumps Tokyo as both ranked among world’s top 10 most livable cities
Osaka’s infrastructure earned higher marks than Tokyo’s in the Economist Intelligence Unit’s latest Global Liveability Index.
‘Princess Mononoke’ comes alive in Super Kabuki staging
The “Princess Mononoke” adaptation was created under Shochiku’s Super Kabuki initiative, a modern form of kabuki with more technology in staging and open to pop culture collaborations.
The beating heart inside ‘Human Vapor’
Different forms of love and connection form the emotional backbone of Netflix’s “Human Vapor,” says actor Shun Oguri, who plays troubled detective Kenji Okamoto.
Japan bets on character IP to drive global growth
Born on social media platforms in 2022, Opanchu Usagi has become a major hit, especially among Generation Z.
Filmmaker explores history of discrimination against foreign nationals in Japan
Takashi Nishihara, the director of "Now and Then," in Tokyo on Wednesday. The director has spent 10 years traversing politically charged terrain while exploring youth-driven grassroots political movements that scrutinize the status quo.
Okinawa’s prized seaweed under threat as oceans warm
Local harvesters gather <i>mozuku</i> during low tide at Hyakuna Beach in the city of Nanjo, Okinawa Prefecture. As the planet warms, rising ocean temperatures are placing increasing pressure on the seaweed industry.

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