Trump and the Japanese technology group SoftBank announce US investments worth 100 billion US dollars

Trump and the Japanese technology group SoftBank announce US investments worth 100 billion US dollars

President-elect Donald Trump and Japanese tech giant SoftBank chief Masayoshi Son will announce a $100 billion investment push to boost artificial intelligence and related infrastructure projects.

The initiative, first reported by CNBC, aims to create 100,000 jobs within four years.

Trump and Son announced a similar initiative in 2016 after Trump was first elected president. The Japanese company agreed to invest $50 billion in the United States to create 50,000 jobs. It’s not clear whether these efforts have fully paid off, as many of SoftBank’s numerous startup investments in the U.S. and beyond have failed to pay off. A 2019 report from Forbes noted that it is difficult to obtain concrete data on the ultimate impact. However, Axios reports that it largely met expectations, at least at times.

Today, SoftBank is a much smaller company than it was when Trump took office nearly a decade ago — and only has $25 billion in cash, according to Bloomberg News, raising questions about how Son and his firm will come up with the money they’ve pledged.

A representative for SoftBank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Son joins the band of tech titans announcing investments in the wake of Trump’s election victory. Earlier this month, Amazon and Meta, Facebook’s parent company, each announced $1 million in contributions to Trump’s inaugural fund, as did OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and AI startup Perplexity.

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