Washington (AFP) – The head of Japan’s SoftBank is set to announce plans on Monday to invest $100 billion in the United States over the next four years, a spokesperson for US President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team told AFP. SoftBank’s billionaire chief executive Masayoshi Son and Trump are expected to jointly announce the planned investment at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida later in the day, according to US media reports.
SoftBank did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The announcement from Son, 67, would be around double the amount he committed SoftBank to in December 2016, shortly before Trump began his first term as US president. The Japanese investment behemoth ultimately parted with close to $100 billion through its Vision Fund, with much of the money supplied by sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Son made his name with successful early investments in Chinese ecommerce titan Alibaba and internet pioneer Yahoo, but has also bet on catastrophic failures such as WeWork. Son has repeatedly said that “artificial superintelligence” will arrive in a decade, bringing new inventions, new medicine, new knowledge and new ways to invest.
© 2024 AFP
