Trump has cozied up to Silicon Valley since winning a second term, with prominent executives joining him at his inauguration
Oracle’s shares jumped about six per cent on the news. The company’s stock is up about 56 per cent over the past year. Softbank’s American depositary receipts rose as much as five per cent.
Trump is signaling a wide-ranging approach to ensure U.S. leadership in the emerging technology. Two weeks before taking office, he announced a US$20 billion investment from Dubai-based billionaire Hussain Sajwani for new data centres across the U.S. On Monday, shortly after his swearing-in, he rescinded AI guardrails imposed by Joe Biden and signed a series of measures to boost U.S. energy development to meet a surge in power demand from data centres.
The announcement was first reported by CBS News. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It’s unclear if the initiative, which the companies are dubbing “Stargate,” is in addition to or part of the US$100 billion that Son pledged SoftBank alone would invest during an event with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate last month.
At the time, Son said the Softbank effort would create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence and related infrastructure, including investments in data centres, semiconductors and energy.
“I would really like to celebrate the great victory of President Trump and my confidence level to the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory,” Son said at the time.
Despite the public pledge, there were immediate questions over where SoftBank would get the capital to fund its initiative. The company had 3.8 trillion yen (US$25 billion) in cash and equivalents on its balance sheet at the end of September. Still, the company’s finances have recovered with the initial public offering of chip design firm Arm Holdings Plc.
Trump has cozied up to Silicon Valley since winning a second term, with prominent executives including Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook and Sundar Pichai joining him at the U.S. Capitol on Monday for his inauguration.
OpenAI’s Altman has spent months trying to form a global coalition among government and industry leaders to support boosting the supply of chips, energy and data centre capacity to support the development of AI. The company also pitched the Biden administration on the need for massive data centers that use as much power as entire cities.
SoftBank previously invested in OpenAI’s most recent fundraising round. OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar told Bloomberg News last month that it was drawn to SoftBank because the company has “access to lots of capital” and is prepared to invest that money, including “in areas like power and data centres.”