SoftBank and OpenAI are moving into cyber defence. The two said on Tuesday they are launching “Patching as a Service,” a security product built on OpenAI’s technology, to shield the companies behind Japan’s critical infrastructure from a rising wave of cyberattacks.
SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son framed the threat in stark terms, calling Japan’s exposure “a crisis” and likening today’s AI-powered attacks to machine guns replacing the rifle shots of the past.
What the service actually does is narrower than the name suggests. It runs an AI-driven vulnerability assessment, then helps plan how to fix the weaknesses it finds and advises on carrying the work out. It stops short of applying the patches itself, and SoftBank is clear that expert human teams still do the prioritising and the planning.
The first customers will be operators of national infrastructure: at the launch Son put the target at around 3,000 firms behind Japan’s airports, power systems and transport, though the official release describes a more measured, progressive outreach to “selected eligible companies.”
Why SoftBank and OpenAI are selling security
