For friends of President-elect Donald Trump, his second term may be the era of doubling down.
Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank Group, joined Trump Monday at his Mar-a-Lago residence to announce that the company would invest $100 billion into the U.S. during the former president’s second tenure in the Oval Office.
This time around, Trump and Son have announced, the majority of the investment dollars will go toward the continued development of artificial intelligence in the U.S.
“This historic investment is 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 U.S.A.,” the president-elect said at a news conference.
He said that, “at a minimum,” the investment would create 100,000 jobs for Americans.
SoftBank has already made several investments in OpenAI, and has been active in the warehouse automation investment space. The companies already benefiting from the firm’s gargantuan financial footprint are myriad, but neither Trump nor Son listed companies that may be beneficiaries of the cash coming from SoftBank.
The Japanese company’s pledge mirrors a similar investment Son announced in the wake of the 2016 election. At the time, the company committed to investing $50 billion in U.S. companies, in turn creating 50,000 jobs.
“This is double of last time, as President Trump said, because I say, ‘Oh, President Trump is a double-down president. I’m going to have to double down,’” Son said of his decision to pledge more cash this time around.
Because much of the $50 billion investment from Trump’s previous term went into private, smaller companies, it’s unclear whether the cash infusion actually yielded marked improvement on the job-creation front. Now-bankrupt WeWork benefitted from SoftBank’s investment frenzy in Trump’s first term.
But even the vote of confidence in his administration and American industry isn’t quite enough for the president-elect, who has made his position on American competitiveness in the AI market overwhelmingly clear.
During the conference, Trump asked Son if he’d be willing to up the stakes of the investment by pledging $200 billion.
“I’ve seen their books; they do have the possibility of doing more. I’m going to ask them to do a little bit more,” he said.
Of the ask, Son simply said he would “try to make it happen.”
It’s not immediately obvious where the funds for the already promised investment would come from; per Reuters, SoftBank’s Sept. 30 earnings report noted that it had about $27 billion in cash on hand.
Nonetheless, Trump and Son seem determined to push AI forward. Son has publicly voiced his belief in the potential for artificial super-intelligence, as well as his interest in investing it despite the enormous amount of money necessary to fund such a development.
And during his campaign, Trump promised to repeal President Joe Biden’s AI executive order from 2023. The details of that pledge remain unclear, and Trump has not laid out any detailed plans for how he and his administration plan to approach AI’s further development.
Last week, Trump appointed David Sacks, technology guru and big business aficionado, to the newly created White House AI and cryptocurrency czar. The move, experts said as cryptocurrency supporters celebrated, is just the latest in a series of moves that shows Trump has a vested interest in supporting the development of emerging technologies at all costs.
After his win in November, experts told Sourcing Journal that they expect a shift toward a deregulated environment for Big Tech. That, they said, is likely to include an absence of a federal legislation package on AI and a less-stringent Federal Trade Commission (FTC) upon the departure of Lina Khan, the agency’s current commissioner. Khan has been notably tough on Big Tech and some of the country’s largest companies.
They also expect to see an increase in AI-based competition with China, given Trump’s insistence that the U.S. come out on top in the AI race, despite lacking the infrastructure to create chips at the same rate as other countries today.
In tandem, if those projections come true, it could mean quicker development of technology usable for a variety of industries, including the retail, logistics, apparel and supply chain verticals. For that kind of movement to prove possible, Trump likely needs to appease his Silicon Valley supporters.
The president-elect said on Monday he has already met with Tim Cook, CEO of Apple; Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai and Sergey Brin, who founded Google. He also expects to meet with Jeff Bezos, executive chairman and founder of e-commerce giant Amazon.
And though Trump and Bezos’ meeting has yet to take place, the business buff has already started to herald Trump and his incoming administration.
At The New York Times’ DealBook Summit, Bezos, when asked about Trump, said he looks forward to what the administration has in store for business and competition in the U.S.
“[Trump] seems to have a lot of energy around reducing regulation. And from my point of view, if I can help him do that, I’m going to help him, because we do have too much regulation in this country,” Bezos said.
Trump seems receptive to meeting with Big Tech executives as Jan. 20, the official start of his next term, draws nearer. Still, he’s not forgotten about the attitudes some carried in his first term.
“In the first term, everybody was fighting me. In this term, everybody wants to be my friend,” Trump said at Monday’s press conference. “The biggest difference is that people want to get along with me this time.”
