SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son smiles with President-elect Donald Trump during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago on Dec 16, 2024, in Palm Beach, Florida. — AP
Palm Beach (Florida): President-elect Donald Trump has announced that SoftBank Group Corp plans to invest US$100bil in the United States over the next four years during an event alongside chief executive officer Masayoshi Son.
“He’s doing this because he feels very optimistic about our country since the election,” Trump said on Monday, adding that the pledge represented a “demonstration of confidence in America’s future”.
“I’m very, very excited,” Son, who met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida, told reporters. “I would really like to celebrate the great victory of President Trump and my confidence level in the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory.”
The plan includes a pledge to create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and related infrastructure, including investments in data centres, semiconductors and energy, according to a person familiar with the plan.
The Japanese billionaire joins a number of technology executives angling to win favour from the incoming administration. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman will give US$1mil to Trump’s inaugural fund after having previously donated to President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.
Meta Platforms Inc, Amazon.com Inc and AI startup Perplexity have also pledged US$1mil apiece.
Son forged a strong relationship with Trump the last time he was president, making a similar visit to Trump Tower in December 2016 and promising the creation of 50,000 jobs as part of a US$50bil investment.
SoftBank was one of several companies that made such pledges at the time.
The company did actively invest in US companies through its Vision Fund investment vehicle.
But Softbank later ran into trouble as many of its deals floundered, including a multi-billion US dollar investment in WeWork, the office space startup that ultimately filed for bankruptcy.
Son’s announcement this time marks the highest-profile commitment by a company to expand investment in the United States since Trump’s election win.
The president-elect promised during his campaign to boost the US economy by cutting corporate tax rates, using tariffs to spur domestic investment by foreign companies and rolling back regulations Republicans say have hampered economic growth.
Trump also promised to speed permitting for anyone willing to invest US$1bil or more for projects in the United States.
While he offered no specifics on how he would accelerate approvals, his pledge addressed a key concern among tech and energy companies that regulatory delays risk slowing upgrades to US energy infrastructure needed to drive development in AI.
“This is President Trump delivering on the promise he made to the American people on the campaign trail that he was going to make the United States of America the manufacturing superpower of the world,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump transition, told Fox Business on Monday.
But Trump also told voters that he wanted foreign-owned corporations to become US-based entities, pledging tax cuts and deregulation to lure companies onshore.
The Softbank investment shows that is unlikely to come to fruition, with global companies eager to make announcements viewed favourably by Trump, but don’t want the commitment of uprooting their headquarters and supply chains.
It’s also unclear how much of the SoftBank pledge would be fresh investment. Even before the election, Son had been planning a US$100bil chip venture to develop chips for AI, Bloomberg News reported.
In the months following Trump’s election to his first term eight years ago, several major companies announced spending pledges – some of which were tied to projects long in the making.
Ford Motor Co, for example, announced plans to cancel a new US$1.6bil plant in Mexico and invest in US facilities after strong criticism from Trump.
The company announced US$1.2bil in investments in three Michigan factories, but some of those plans had been part of contract negotiations with the United Auto Workers union in 2015, Ford’s president of the Americas said at the time.
Another question with the SoftBank announcement is where the company will get the capital for its latest pledge.
During Trump’s last term, Son was raising his US$100bil Vision Fund with money from outside investors and poured the cash into startups such as WeWork, Uber Technologies Inc and DoorDash Inc.
SoftBank doesn’t have the cash on hand to deliver on Son’s pledge this time. The company had 3.8 trillion yen or about US$24.6bil in cash and equivalents on its balance at the end of September.
Still, the company’s finances have recovered with the initial public offering of chip design firm Arm Holdings Plc.
SoftBank still owns about 90% of Arm, which now has a market capitalisation of about US$160bil. Son has vowed to increase his investments in AI, which he has described as a technology that will change virtually every business.
SoftBank invested US$500mil in OpenAI in October and is aiming to increase that investment by acquiring up to US$1.5bil in the startup’s stock through a tender offer for existing shareholders. — Bloomberg
