Trump and Japan’s technology company SoftBank pledge $100 billion in U.S. investments

President-elect Donald Trump and Masayoshi Son, the CEO of Japanese tech behemoth SoftBank, will unveil a $100 billion investment initiative to boost artificial intelligence and related infrastructure projects.

Trump and Son announced a similar project in 2016, after Trump was elected president for the first time, with the Japanese company promising to invest $50 billion in the United States with the goal of creating 50,000 jobs.

It is unclear whether that endeavor was totally successful, given many of SoftBank’s numerous startup investments in the United States and elsewhere failed to pay off. According to a Forbes analysis from 2019, it is difficult to obtain hard evidence on the ultimate impact. According to Axios, it mainly met expectations, at least for a period.

SoftBank is now a lot smaller company than it was when Trump first took office over a decade ago – according to Bloomberg News, it only has $25 billion in cash on hand, prompting concerns about how Son and his company will fund the pledge.