In the high-stakes world of artificial intelligence, where fortunes are made and lost on the promise of super intelligent machines, few companies get as much attention as SoftBank. Masayoshi Son, the CEO of the Japanese tech company, is a visionary leader who sometimes takes risks. The company has long seen itself as a key player in global innovation. But is SoftBank really the “kingmaker” who will shape the future of AI now that it has pledged $100 billion to AI infrastructure in the US? Or is it just another risky bet in a world full of hype and problems? As of September 2025, the answer leans toward the former, but there are some caveats that show both success and trouble.
Masayoshi Son: The AI Ambition Prophet
To understand what SoftBank does, you need to know about Masayoshi Son. The billionaire, who is 68 years old, has been preaching about how AI could change the world for decades, often in terms of the end of the world. In an interview from 2023, Son said that artificial general intelligence (AGI), or machines that are smarter than people, could be here in ten years and change the way economies and societies work. His excitement isn’t just talk; he backs it up with action. SoftBank’s Vision Fund, which started in 2017 with $100 billion from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and other sources, put billions into AI favorites like Uber, WeWork, and DoorDash. However, it also had some huge failures, like the $18.5 billion WeWork disaster.
In late 2024, Son’s trip to President-elect Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate was a turning point. There, with Trump by his side, Son said he would invest an incredible $100 billion in U.S. AI and infrastructure over the next four years, promising to create 100,000 jobs in the process. Trump joked that Son could “double it,” which added to the drama of the moment. This promise wasn’t out of the blue; it was based on SoftBank’s history of making big bets, like early investments in Arm Holdings (a chip design powerhouse that is very important for AI) and a portfolio of AI startups that now includes robotics, semiconductors, and data processing.
By the middle of 2025, Son’s vision had grown. He proposed a $1 trillion AI and robotics project for Arizona, making the state a desert-born Silicon Valley. TIME’s 2025 AI 100 list named Son as one of the top 100 AI developers. He was praised for his “unprecedented commitment to ASI [artificial superintelligence] development.” But Son’s past is a double-edged sword: Successes like Alibaba (a $20 million investment grew to more than $100 billion) show how smart he is, but failures show that even kingmakers can make mistakes.
The $100 Billion Bet: Stargate and More
Project Stargate is a huge partnership between SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle that is at the center of SoftBank’s push for AI. This project, which started in early 2025 with an initial investment of $100 billion and could grow to $500 billion by 2028, aims to build huge AI data centers all over the U.S., starting in Abilene, Texas. The project bought Foxconn’s Ohio plant in August 2025 to speed up the development of supercomputers. Its goal is to fix the infrastructure problems that AI faces, like data centers that need gigawatts of electricity and huge cooling systems.
Stargate isn’t just about hardware; it’s a way to take over AI training and deployment. Sam Altman from OpenAI and Larry Ellison from Oracle have different strengths that work well together: Altman has cutting-edge models and Ellison has cloud expertise. SoftBank provides the money. By September 2025, the project had led to other investments, such as SoftBank’s issuance of a ¥100 billion ($700 million) subordinated bond to help fund its AI goals.
This is in line with a larger trend in the U.S. to make big promises, like NVIDIA’s $500 billion in AI factories, Apple’s $600 billion in domestic manufacturing, and TSMC’s $100 billion in chips. SoftBank doesn’t get the biggest piece, but its focus on creating jobs (100,000 promised) and partnerships across borders makes it a catalyst, bringing in allies like UAE’s MGX for more money.
We can already see the effects on the economy. In the second quarter of 2025, AI startups got almost half of the $101.8 billion in global VC funding, even though the number of deals fell by 30%. SoftBank’s work with companies like Tempus AI (healthcare) and Perplexity AI (search) shows how it is helping to expand the use of AI beyond chatbots to areas like medicine and energy.
Risk-Taker or Kingmaker? The Power Plays and Dangers
SoftBank’s power goes beyond money. It has funneled Japanese precision (through Arm) into American innovation while also trying to get oil money from the Middle East to build green AI infrastructure. As America focuses on bringing jobs back home during the Trump era, SoftBank’s promises have been called a “Trump effect,” along with Hyundai’s $20 billion and Saudi Arabia’s $600 billion promises. However, critics question the content: As of September 2025, only a small part of the $100 billion has been used. Some people, like one X user, say, “OpenAI and SoftBank don’t have the money to invest.” Not once. SoftBank’s debt load, which is more than $150 billion, raises eyebrows, especially after the Vision Fund’s shift from ride-sharing to AI.
SoftBank has a lot of power in the world of politics. Its ties to Stargate could help the U.S. stay ahead in AI as tensions rise with China, where Huawei and others are trying to challenge Western dominance. But there are risks: AI’s energy needs could put a strain on power grids (Stargate alone needs 1.2 GW in Texas), and regulatory scrutiny over monopolies—like Perplexity’s rumored $34.5 billion bid for Google Chrome—could lead to antitrust problems. Analysts at Barclays say that AI megadeals worth more than $100 billion are coming soon, but they warn that these deals “will defy imagination” and could make markets unstable.
The Verdict: A Crowned Contender, but Not the Only Ruler
SoftBank isn’t the only giant; Meta, Google, and xAI are all putting billions into their own empires. But its $100 billion bet, backed up by Stargate and Son’s constant support, makes it a kingmaker. SoftBank is helping to make AI the most important technology of our time by creating ecosystems that combine capital, talent, and infrastructure. This could lead to hundreds of thousands of new jobs and trillions of dollars in value. In the unpredictable world of AI, where today’s unicorn can turn into tomorrow’s warning story, SoftBank’s throne is only safe if it lives up to the hype. Son might say that the real test of intelligence is still to come.
