Athira Sethu
Kochi, 17 December 2024
Masayoshi Son, CEO of Japan’s technology firm SoftBank, plans to invest $100 billion in the United States during the next four years, the entrepreneur said at his meeting with President-elect Donald Trump in his Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida on Monday.
This is done with the purpose of employing 100,000 workers and working towards the establishment of artificial intelligence (AI) and the necessary infrastructure. The fund for this investment is anticipated to be from several SoftBank-owned ventures, including the Vision Fund, capital projects, and Arm Holdings, which is a chipmaker in which SoftBank owns a majority. Among those are past investments, like $1.5 billion funded into OpenAI, the developer of the popular AI program ChatGPT.
Earlier, Son visited India where he met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 27 and discussed his vision of making India the global hub for chip production, particularly as AI revolutionizes the technology sector, with plans to work with Arm Holdings in helping India produce 1 million chip designers by partnering with universities and institutions.
SoftBank reported an $8 billion profit for the July-September quarter, its highest in more than two years, mainly due to successful IPOs from Indian companies like FirstCry and Ola Electric.
