(Bloomberg) — President Donald Trump is expected to announce a new investment campaign for artificial intelligence led by Softbank Group Corp., OpenAI LLC, and Oracle Corp., with the three companies preparing to announce a joint venture worth billions of dollars.
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Softbank's Masayoshi Son, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and Oracle's Larry Ellison will join Trump in announcing an initial investment of $100 billion – which could increase to $500 billion over the next four years – on Tuesday afternoon, according to a House official White
Oracle shares jumped about 6% on the news. The company's stock is up around 56% over the past year. Softbank's American deposit receipts rose as much as 5%.
Trump signals a broad approach to securing US leadership in emerging technology. Two weeks before taking office, he announced a $20 billion investment by Dubai billionaire Hussain Sajwani for new data centers across the US. On Monday, shortly after being sworn in, he repealed AI guardrails installed by Joe Biden and signed a series of measures to boost US energy development to meet a surge in demand for power from data centers.
The announcement was first reported by CBS News. The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It is unclear whether the venture, which the companies are calling “Stargate,” is in addition to or part of the $100 billion Son SoftBank has promised to invest alone during an event with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate last month.
At the time, Son said Softbank's effort would create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence and related infrastructure, including investments in data centers, semiconductors and energy.
“I would like to celebrate President Trump's great victory and my level of confidence in the US economy has increased tremendously with his victory,” Son said at the time.
Despite the public promise, there were immediate questions about where SoftBank would get the capital to fund its venture. The company had 3.8 trillion yen ($25 billion) in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet at the end of September. Still, the company's finances have improved with the initial public offering of chip design company Arm Holdings Plc.