OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the world’s most prominent artificial intelligence developers, are reportedly exploring plans to use investor funds to help cover potential multibillion-dollar legal settlements tied to ongoing copyright infringement cases.

According to a report by the Financial Times on Wednesday, the companies have held internal discussions about deploying part of their venture capital and corporate funding to offset legal liabilities if courts rule that their AI models unlawfully used copyrighted materials. The report underscores growing financial and legal pressure on the AI sector as a wave of lawsuits from authors, media organizations, and entertainment companies challenge how generative AI systems were trained.

Copyright owners have filed a series of high-stakes lawsuits against technology giants, including OpenAI, Microsoft, and Meta Platforms, accusing them of scraping and reproducing protected works to train AI systems without authorization. The suits, many of them class actions filed in U.S. federal courts, allege that large language models like OpenAI’s GPT and Anthropic’s Claude have effectively copied vast quantities of text, books, and visual media from the internet without compensation.

The financial exposure from such cases could be enormous. Industry lawyers estimate potential liabilities across the AI sector could exceed tens of billions of dollars, depending on how courts interpret “fair use” exemptions and whether AI outputs are deemed derivative works.

OpenAI’s Insurance Limits and Risk Strategy

The Financial Times said OpenAI has sought to protect itself by purchasing insurance coverage for emerging AI-related risks, reportedly through Aon, a major global insurance broker. Sources familiar with the policy told the paper that OpenAI secured coverage worth up to $300 million, though another insider disputed that figure, suggesting the true amount is “significantly lower.”

Regardless of the exact figure, both sources agreed that the coverage falls far short of the potential financial exposure the company faces from ongoing and future lawsuits.

Kevin Kalinich, Aon’s global head of cyber risk, told the FT that the broader insurance market is not yet equipped to handle the scale of liabilities facing AI model developers.

“There’s not enough capacity for [AI model] providers,” he said, citing the novelty and unpredictability of AI-related claims.

Given those constraints, OpenAI is reportedly considering a form of “self-insurance” — setting aside a portion of its investor capital in a ring-fenced “captive” vehicle to manage risk internally. Captives are a common mechanism used by large corporations to insure against unique or hard-to-price risks, such as cyberattacks, environmental liability, or product failure.

The report noted that OpenAI’s investor pool includes heavyweights such as Microsoft, Thrive Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz. Any move to use investor funds for insurance or settlements would likely require their approval, given the scale of the potential financial commitments.

Anthropic’s Legal Exposure and Recent Settlement

Anthropic, another leading AI developer backed by Amazon and Google, faces similar legal battles and has reportedly begun using its own capital reserves to handle potential liabilities. The Financial Times cited a person familiar with the company’s finances who said Anthropic is partly funding a recent $1.5 billion preliminary settlement of a copyright class action brought by a group of authors in California.

The settlement, preliminarily approved by a federal judge last month, marks one of the largest copyright-related deals in AI’s short history and could set a precedent for how future claims against AI firms are resolved.

A Legal and Financial Reckoning for AI

The mounting legal challenges highlight an unresolved issue at the heart of the AI revolution — whether developers can legally use publicly available data, including copyrighted material, to train models that now power billion-dollar businesses.

AI developers have argued that their training practices fall under the U.S. legal doctrine of “fair use,” which allows limited reproduction of copyrighted works for purposes such as research and innovation. But publishers, authors, and artists say the models have created a new kind of industrial-scale copying that deprives them of compensation while generating enormous profits for tech companies.

The lawsuits also expose the gap between AI companies’ insurance protections and their real-world financial exposure. Traditional insurers have struggled to model AI-related risks due to the lack of historical precedent and the fast pace of technological change.

If OpenAI and Anthropic proceed with self-insurance strategies, it would represent a significant shift in how AI companies allocate investor capital — diverting funds meant for product development into legal defense reserves. Analysts warn that such moves could slow innovation and signal the growing financial strain the AI industry faces as it collides with copyright law.

For investors, the question now is whether AI companies can remain attractive amid rising legal uncertainty. The lawsuits are believed to be a fundamental challenge to the AI business model, and if courts decide that these models rely on unlawful data use, the entire industry will have to rethink how AI is built and trained.

SoftBank Group Corp. has agreed to acquire the robotics division of Swiss engineering giant ABB Ltd. for $5.4 billion, in a landmark deal that marks Masayoshi Son’s most ambitious push yet to merge artificial intelligence with physical automation.

The transaction, announced on Wednesday, represents a major reshaping of both companies’ strategic priorities. For ABB, it’s a divestment from one of its most volatile but high-profile businesses. For SoftBank, it’s a major step toward establishing what Son calls “Physical AI” — the fusion of advanced machine learning models with robotics that can act, sense, and learn in the real world.

The ABB robotics acquisition gives SoftBank immediate global scale in industrial robotics, adding roughly 7,000 employees, a network of manufacturing plants across Europe, Asia, and North America, and a portfolio of over 400,000 industrial robots deployed globally. ABB’s robotics division generated $2.3 billion in revenue last year, contributing about 7% to ABB’s total sales.

While ABB’s robotics business has long been respected for its precision automation technology, it has struggled to maintain high profit margins due to intense competition from Japan’s Fanuc and Yaskawa, and Germany’s Kuka — now owned by China’s Midea Group. ABB’s decision to sell, rather than spin off the division, came after years of underperformance and challenges in integrating its robotics operations with its core electrification and automation segments.

ABB CEO Morten Wierod, who took over in 2023, told Reuters the sale offered “immediate value” and would allow ABB to focus on higher-margin and faster-growing areas.

“We always said that robotics is a market with much higher volatility,” he said. “This transaction allows us to channel resources into electrification, automation, and digitalization — markets where we see stable long-term growth.”

The deal is expected to close between mid-2026 and late 2026, pending regulatory approvals in the European Union, Japan, and the United States. ABB will receive about $5.3 billion in cash proceeds, which Wierod said would be used to expand production capacity, develop next-generation automation technologies, and fund potential acquisitions.

For SoftBank, the acquisition continues a series of aggressive moves to secure dominance in artificial intelligence and robotics infrastructure. In March, SoftBank bought chip design startup Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion, part of a broader strategy to control the hardware powering AI systems. The company has also invested heavily in automation startups such as Berkshire Grey, AutoStore, and Brain Corp, and led a $40 billion funding round in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

Son, who has previously described himself as “obsessed with AI,” said the ABB acquisition is designed to combine SoftBank’s growing AI software ecosystem with physical robotics platforms.

“SoftBank’s next frontier is physical AI,” he said. “Together with ABB Robotics, we will unite world-class technology and talent under our shared vision to fuse Artificial Super Intelligence and robotics — driving a groundbreaking evolution that will propel humanity forward.”

Industry experts see the move as part of SoftBank’s return to high-risk, high-reward investing after a period of restraint following the Vision Fund’s multibillion-dollar losses in 2020 and 2021.

ABB Exits an Uneven Market

ABB’s robotics division was once a symbol of the company’s innovation drive, supplying robots to major automakers and electronics firms. However, the division’s performance lagged in recent years due to uneven global demand and rising costs. In 2022, ABB reported that its robotics profit margin had dropped below 10%, far lower than its automation unit’s 17%.

Zürcher Kantonalbank, which had valued the division at slightly under $4 billion ahead of a planned IPO, called the $5.4 billion sale price “an unexpectedly strong outcome.” ABB’s shares rose 2% in early Zurich trading on Wednesday, while SoftBank’s stock fell slightly by 2%, as investors digested the scale of the acquisition.

The sale will also allow ABB to exit a sector facing structural headwinds. The global robotics market — valued at around $40 billion in 2024, according to Statista — is projected to grow 14% annually, driven by AI adoption and labor shortages. But the market is also becoming crowded with new entrants from China, South Korea, and the U.S., many of whom are offering cheaper, AI-powered robots.

The Rise of “Physical AI”

Son has spent years talking about “Singularity” — the moment when AI surpasses human intelligence. With the ABB acquisition, he appears to be pivoting that vision toward tangible, machine-driven productivity. The concept of “Physical AI” involves combining advanced AI systems like OpenAI’s GPT models with robotics capable of adapting to unpredictable physical environments, from warehouses and factories to homes and hospitals.

The acquisition will likely draw scrutiny from competition regulators, especially in Europe and Japan, where industrial robotics forms a critical export sector. The European Commission is expected to assess whether the deal gives SoftBank disproportionate influence over automation supply chains, particularly given its existing stake in several robotics and chip design firms.

In Japan, the government has generally supported Son’s AI vision, viewing it as aligned with Tokyo’s “Society 5.0” initiative — a national framework to fuse digital and physical innovation. Japanese industry officials believe the ABB deal could help strengthen domestic robotics and AI industries, especially as Japan faces chronic labor shortages.

The acquisition, expected to finalize within two years, will mark one of the largest-ever robotics takeovers and a defining moment for Son’s comeback as one of the tech industry’s most daring visionaries.