SoftBank pitches US$1 trillion Arizona AI hub, Bloomberg News reports

Softbank founder and chief executive Masayoshi Son. (AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son is envisaging setting up a US$1 trillion industrial complex in Arizona that will build robots and artificial intelligence, Bloomberg News reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Son is seeking to team up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) for the project, which is aimed at bringing back high-end tech manufacturing to the U.S. and to create a version of China’s vast manufacturing hub of Shenzhen, the report said.

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, the report said.

SoftBank is keen to have TSMC involved in the project, codenamed Project Crystal Land, but it is not clear in what capacity, the report said. It is also not clear the Taiwanese company would be interested, it said.

TSMC is already building chipmaking factories in the U.S. with a planned investment of $165 billion.

Son is also sounding out interest among tech companies including Samsung Electronics, the report said.

The plans are preliminary and feasibility depends on support from the Trump administration and state officials, it said.

A commitment of $1 trillion would be double that of the $500 billion “Stargate” project which seeks to build out data center capacity across the U.S., with funding from SoftBank, OpenAI and Oracle.

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

The proposed scheme follows a series of big investment announcements SoftBank has made this year.

In March it announced it would acquire U.S. semiconductor design company Ampere for $6.5 billion and in April said it would underwrite up to $40 billion of new investment in OpenAI, of which up to $10 billion would be syndicated to other investors.

This week SoftBank raised $4.8 billion from a sale of shares in T-Mobile TMUS.O.