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Japan’s SoftBank on Monday unveiled plans to invest $100bn and create 100,000 jobs in the US, in the latest sign of how companies are rushing to ingratiate themselves with Donald Trump.
Masayoshi Son, SoftBank’s billionaire chief executive, stood next to the president-elect at Mar-a-Lago on Monday as the pair formally announced the plans.
“I would really like to celebrate the great victory of President Trump,” Son said, adding that he was “excited” by the planned investment and also hoped that Trump would “bring the world into peace again”.
Trump called Son a “brilliant guy” and said the planned investment was “a monumental demonstration of confidence in America’s future. It will help ensure that artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and other industries tomorrow are built, created and grown right here in the USA.”
The maverick investor, who made a similar move after Trump won the presidential election in 2016, will focus the new investment on creating AI-linked jobs and infrastructure projects, including those focused on chips and data centres, a person familiar with the matter said. It is unclear how Son, who is known for his lofty pronouncements, will be able to fund his $100bn investment pledge.
SoftBank’s shares closed more than 4 per cent higher on Tuesday in Tokyo following the announcement.
Son’s announcement comes as US technology groups, led by Amazon and Meta, have moved to make big donations to the fund for Trump’s inauguration in January — signalling corporate America’s efforts to curry favour with the incoming president.
Trump said on Monday Jeff Bezos, the executive chair of Amazon, would be coming to see him this week, and added that he had recently had dinner with Tim Cook of Apple. “In the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend,” Trump said.
The US president-elect has vowed to spur investment in the US with a mix of low taxes and deregulation — and even promised to expedite regulatory approvals for companies that plough $1bn or more into the US economy. Howard Lutnick, his nominee to be commerce secretary, also attended the event with Son on Monday.
Investors hope Trump’s plans will boost the world’s biggest economy, a bet that has prompted strong inflows into US stocks since November’s election and sent equities zooming higher.
But his threats to impose sweeping tariffs on imports from around the world, his expected crackdown on immigration and his rollback of other manufacturing incentives enacted during Joe Biden’s administration threaten to undermine his pro-growth efforts, analysts say.
Son similarly vowed to inject $50bn into the US economy and create 50,000 jobs following Trump’s 2016 win. A person familiar with the plans said the size of the latest investment could be subject to change.
The investor that year raised $100bn through the SoftBank Vision Fund, with the support of Saudi Arabia. That cash backed a variety of US tech companies, including Uber and WeWork, but it is unclear exactly how many jobs it created over the four-year period.
This time Son is likely to use his chip design company Arm, which is the crown jewel of SoftBank’s portfolio of assets, as the vehicle to create jobs and invest in AI more broadly.
