Japanese billionaire, Masayoshi Son, who owns multinational telecommunications and Internet corporation, Softbank, has promised to invest $50billion in the US thereby creating about 50,000 jobs in the country, after a meeting with US president-elect Donald Trump.
The investment according to Masayoshi would go into new startup companies in the United States. The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Masayoshi said the $50 billion investment he pledged with Trump would come from an already established global investment fund his firm set up earlier this year with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund and other potential partners. While the details of the investment fund are still not clear, reports put it that the Masayoshi’s SoftBank Vision Fund would invest at least $25 billion over the next five years, while the Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, would put in $45 billion.
Prior to this time, both the Saudi-Arabia fund and Masayoshi had collaborated to build a $100billion fund it hoped will be the biggest investor in the tech space over the next ten years. In 2016 alone, Softbank has invested in Uber, announced a sale of their shares worth $7.9 billion of their stake in the Alibaba group among other things. Trump has since taken to Twitter to announce the deal.
Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016
Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 6, 2016
