Min Jeong Lee, Mackenzie Hawkins and Anto Antony
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(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp. founder Masayoshi Son is seeking to team up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. to realize what could be his biggest bet yet — a trillion-dollar industrial complex in Arizona to build robots and artificial intelligence.
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Son envisions a version of the vast manufacturing hub of China’s Shenzhen that would bring back high-tech manufacturing to the US, according to people familiar with the billionaire’s thinking. The park may comprise production lines for AI-powered industrial robots, they said, asking not to be named as the plan remains private.
SoftBank officials are keen to have the Taiwanese maker of Nvidia Corp.’s advanced AI chips play a prominent role in the project, although it’s not clear what part Son sees for TSMC, which already plans to invest $165 billion in the US and has started mass production at its first Arizona factory. Nor is it clear that TSMC would be interested. A person familiar with the chipmaker’s thinking said that SoftBank’s project has no bearing on TSMC’s plans in Phoenix.
Codenamed “Project Crystal Land,” the Arizona complex represents the 67-year-old SoftBank chief’s most ambitious attempt in a career that’s spanned numerous bet-the-house bids, thousands-fold-returns and billions of dollars in losses. Son, who’s often expressed disappointment in his own legacy, has repeatedly said he means to do everything he can to hurry AI development.
SoftBank officials have spoken with federal and state government officials to discuss possible tax breaks for companies building factories or otherwise investing in the industrial park, including talks with US Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, the people said.
The Japanese billionaire is also personally sounding out interest among an array of tech companies, they said. The project has been floated to executives at South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co., they said.
Shares of SoftBank rose 2.7% Friday. TSMC’s stock price rose 1.9%, while Samsung’s gained 0.5%.
Representatives of SoftBank, TSMC and Samsung declined to comment. A Commerce Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
SoftBank’s attempts to get businesses investing in a US industrial park follow signs that its campaign alongside ChatGPT maker OpenAI to raise hundreds of billions of dollars for US data centers is moving slower than initially expected. Crystal Land would need to address crucial details, such as whether there’s demand and funding on par with its grandiose scale, to become reality.
