en.Wedoany.com Reported - SoftBank Corp and mobile payment operator PayPay are in talks to invest in retail giant Seven & i Holdings.

According to reports, the total investment could reach hundreds of billions of yen, and Sumitomo Mitsui Card, a unit of Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, may also take a stake.

SoftBank, Seven & i, PayPay, and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group all declined to comment. Seven & i operates 7-Eleven stores globally, with Japan and the United States as its largest markets. The company has faced pressure from investors for years due to poor returns, demanding a focus on its core convenience store business.

If the investment succeeds, it would provide a boost to the struggling Seven & i. Over the past year, the company has been locked in a prolonged battle with Canadian convenience store rival Alimentation Couche-Tard, which attempted a takeover that would have been the largest foreign acquisition in Japan's history, but Seven & i failed to turn around its sluggish business. In March 2025, Seven & i agreed to sell its supermarket operations—which include stores much larger than convenience stores and operate under independent brands—to private equity firm Bain Capital. SoftBank plans to use internal artificial intelligence to improve store management and introduce autonomous robots to reduce labor needs at Seven & i stores. SoftBank Corp, the domestic telecommunications subsidiary of SoftBank Group, has been collaborating with ChatGPT maker OpenAI to develop AI tools for corporate clients. SoftBank Group's cumulative committed investment in OpenAI will exceed $60 billion by the end of 2026.