Report: SoftBank to Invest $1 Trillion in AI-Powered Robot Factories in US

Japanese tech investment firm SoftBank Group is reportedly planning to invest $1 trillion to build artificial intelligence (AI)-equipped factories in the United States.

The factories will be located in industrial parks across the country and the robots with which they will be equipped will be designed to provide a solution for American manufacturers that are facing labor shortages, Nikkei reported Friday (March 28), citing unnamed sources.

SoftBank Group did not immediately reply to PYMNTS’ request for comment.

The Nikkei report noted that this amount is higher than the $500 billion investment SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son announced in January.

It was reported in December that Son said SoftBank would invest $100 billion in the United States over the next four years, creating at least 100,000 jobs focused on AI and related infrastructure.

Son made the announcement at the Mar-a-Lago residence of then-President-elect Donald Trump.

“My confidence level to the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory,” Son said of Trump. “President Trump is a double-down president. I’m going to have to double down.”

Son made a similar investment in December 2016 ahead of Trump’s first term, saying he saw a lot of deregulation coming with a Trump presidency.

In January, Trump announced the up-to-$500 billion Stargate project, in which SoftBank is an equity partner, together with OpenAI, Oracle and MGX. Son will chair the project and SoftBank will be responsible for funding the venture.

Stargate aims to build big AI-focused data centers in the U.S., with the first 500,000-square-foot data center being built in Abilene, Texas.

It was reported in February that SoftBank was leading a $500 million investment round in Skild AI, a startup developing general intelligence for robots that can be adapted to perform different tasks.

SoftBank participated in an earlier funding round for Skild AI, in which the startup raised $300 million in July to build its AI model for robotics.

Skild AI said at the time in a press release that it would use the new capital to expand its team and to continue scaling its model and training datasets in preparation for future commercial deployment of its technology.

It was noted in the press release that general purpose robots could support the understaffed labor market and perform hazardous jobs.

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