SoftBank pledges to pour $100B into US, create 100,000 jobs in Trump's second term

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son revealed plans to invest $100 billion in the US and create a minimum of 100,000 jobs in the next four years.

Son made his promise while speaking alongside president-elect Donald Trump, who hailed the pledge as an "historic investment" and "a monumental demonstration of confidence in America's future, and it will help ensure that artificial intelligence, emerging technologies and other industries of tomorrow are built, created, and grown right here in the USA."

This isn't the first time that Son has announced big plans to invest in the US. During Trump's first term, Son promised $50 billion in US investment. Now for Trump's second term, he says he's "doubling down."

In fact, if Trump had his way, SoftBank would double down yet again, with the once and future president teasing the exec about the possibility of increasing this latest investment to $200 billion.

In response to the apparent joke, Son said he would "try to make it happen."

Son didn't detail his planned investment. The Register has asked SoftBank for comment and we'll let you know if the conglomerate responds.

Trump's mention of artificial intelligence offers one clue, as SoftBank is known to be trying to capitalize on the ongoing AI boom.

The Japanese multinational has a long and checkered history of backing technology businesses. Most notably, SoftBank took British chip designer Arm Holdings private in 2016, before it once again listed on the NASDAQ in early 2023.

Speaking at SoftBank World earlier this year, Son declared that the singularity – a sudden step-change in technological capability that rapidly transforms society – is near, and in 2023 predicted artificial general intelligence will arrive within a decade. In Son's view, Arm will play a big role in making that happen.

SoftBank has made other bets on AI. Back in July it acquired another British chip designer called Graphcore. As Bloomberg reported, the acquisition is part of a broader effort to build a $100 billion AI chip powerhouse capable of challenging Nvidia.

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Speaking of Nvidia, in November SoftBank announced it would build Japan's "most powerful AI supercomputer" using the GPU giant's latest Blackwell accelerators. That same month the mega-investor also funneled $1.5 billion into AI model builder OpenAI.

Softbank's US investments could also include funding the construction of large AI datacenters.

Over the past year we've seen GPU-bit barn operators like CoreWeave, Lambda, Voltage Park, and others rake in billions of dollars in debt financing from large investors to finance the construction of new facilities containing tens of thousands of accelerators. As our sibling site The Next Platform has previously discussed, at least for the moment, the return on investment for these facilities is on the order of 3.5x.

However, it's worth noting that not all of SoftBank's bets have panned out. For instance, WeWork, into which SoftBank invested billions, filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy a little over a year ago. So should Son's $100 billion in US investments materialize as promised, they may create new opportunities – but they're by no means guaranteed to succeed. ®