SoftBank founder pitches trillion US AI hub to TSMC and Trump team

SoftBank explores tax breaks for U.S. industrial park project, seeks TSMC involvement, declines to comment on details.
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REUTERS

SoftBank Group Corp founder Masayoshi Son is seeking to team up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co for a trillion-dollar industrial complex in Arizona to build robots and artificial intelligence, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

SoftBank officials have spoken with U.S. federal and state government officials to discuss possible tax breaks for companies building factories or otherwise investing in the industrial park, including talks with U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, Bloomberg said.

A commitment of $1 trillion is double that of the $500 billion “Stargate” project which seeks to build out data centre capacity across the U.S., funded by SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle .

SoftBank is keen to have TSMC involved in the project but it is not clear the Taiwanese company would be interested, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

SoftBank declined to comment. TSMC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House and U.S. Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to requests for comment.