SoftBank is investing $100 billion into US companies, President-elect Donald Trump announced Monday with CEO Masayoshi Son.
“My confidence level of the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory,” Son said at the press conference.
The colossal bet on US industry is Masa’s latest effort to reassert SoftBank—and himself—as the world’s leading tech investor after having retreated to the sidelines in 2023.
The Japanese investor is in a transitional period. Last month, Rajeev Misra, one of the original architects of the Vision Fund, left the company. After being burned by the tech reset in 2022, SoftBank has restarted investing in startups heavily geared toward AI. Its recent investments include OpenAI and Glean.
Across its two Vision Funds and LatAm fund, SoftBank’s current investment gain stands at $1.9 billion.
But SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, which it largely deployed in 2020 and 2021, is still underwater to the tune of $22 billion. Despite strong tech stock performance in the second half of 2024, VF2’s fair value remained flat this year: It started 2024 at $33.7 billion, and its fair value had dipped to $32.9 billion as of September 30.
This is a huge sum for SoftBank to deploy from its balance sheet. SoftBank recorded a $17 billion investment gain in the six months ending September 2024—up from a $6 billion loss the year prior.
In 2016, after Trump’s first election victory, SoftBank announced it would invest $50 billion into US companies. It followed through, backing startups such as DoorDash and Slack. Both were tremendously successful for Vision Fund 1, netting a gross return on investment of $7.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively.
But the firm reportedly invested roughly $18.5 billion into the now-bankrupt co-working space provider WeWork.
Featured image of SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son by Koki Nagahama/Getty Images
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