Japan's "Softbank" led by CEO Son Masayoshi, will invest $50 billion in the US. This he said in his meeting and pledge to US president-elect Donald Trump. The tech fund is an investment from Softbank that is supposed to create 50,000 jobs in the US.
The initial investment would be a $1 billion investment in OneWeb. OneWeb is a Florida startup which aims to provide Internet access from small satellites orbiting the Earth. Softbank is a Japanese multinational telecommunications and Internet corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It has businesses in e-commerce, the Internet, technology services, broadband, fixed-line telecommunications, media and marketing, finance, semiconductor design, and others. Masayoshi Son is its CEO.
President-elect Donald Trump claimed that had he not won, Softbank would not have invested the $50 billion. However, questions were raised about the funds reaching the US anyway, whether or not Donald Trump won. This is because, in another event, Masayoshi Son told the Wall Street Journal that the funds will come from a $100 billion technology investment fund formed by the bank and Saudi Arabia. The US has the most number of startups in the world.
The OneWeb deal further complicates the picture. That money is coming directly from SoftBank rather than the fund, which is "still in the early planning stages," according to Softbank spokesman Matthew Nicholson. See CNN Tech report SoftBank's $50 billion pledge to Trump just got more complicated
Nicholson disputed that Son said the $50 billion investment in the U.S. would come entirely from the fund. "The way I understood it, it is a commitment from SoftBank," he said. "Where and what exactly it comes from, that's a little beside the point."
Son has previously made savvy investments in the tech sector over the years, including in giant e-commerce Alibaba (BABA, Tech30). However, he has unsuccessfully struggled to make a multibillion-dollar takeover of Sprint (S). See also Yahoo report SoftBank to invest $1 billion in U.S. venture OneWeb as part of $50 billion pledge. See related Traveler's Today report Netflix Wants To Put A Stop On "Unreasonable" Internet Data Caps
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