SoftBank Pitches US AI Hub to TSMC

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00:00We were talking earlier in the show about the realistic possibility of this.

00:04We're talking about $1 trillion worth of investment out of SoftBank.

00:07Put that in the context for us.

00:09Well, this story poses a lot of questions, to your point.

00:12What you can't do is fault Masayoshi Son of SoftBank for his ambition.

00:15And it is absolutely gigantic, isn't it?

00:17$1 trillion, and he wants to recreate a kind of Shenzhen in the U.S.

00:22Potentially alongside TSMC, of course, the Foundry, and, of course, Samsung as well.

00:28We haven't heard comments from them.

00:30The money that would be involved, where would that come from?

00:31Private capital.

00:32SoftBank doesn't have the capital, clearly, to fund that.

00:35Portfolio companies.

00:36Part of the reason he wants to do this is to ensure that there is the supply chain for his own portfolio companies

00:40and make sure that they are lifted and elevated on this front.

00:44You would imagine that OpenAI would have a piece to play, as would ARM as well,

00:48that is moving closer into data centers in terms of their CPUs aligning with AI accelerators.

00:53It's an absolutely gigantic plan.

00:54At a time, of course, when TSMC already has its investment commitments,

00:58in Arizona in terms of building out a foundry there.

01:00So lots of questions that go with this, but I think it's a reminder, number one,

01:04of trying to hit the sweet spots when it comes to President Trump's ambitions

01:07to build out that manufacturing in the U.S.

01:09And you would have thought that at least top line he would welcome this.

01:11And we know that there have been conversations between Masa and Howard Lutnik

01:15of the Commerce Secretary, of course, in the U.S.

01:17So it hits that, and it ticks that box in terms of Trump's ambitions.

01:21But we do need to find out where the capital is coming from,

01:23where the spending is coming from, and whether, indeed, they can get the talent

01:26and the engineers not just to build all these projects, but actually to operate them as well,

01:30which has been a constraint and a bottleneck in the U.S.

01:32Yeah, and there's also a massive debate about whether this is exactly the right way

01:35to spend that money.

01:36It's a huge amount of money to throw at the problem, right?

01:38And clearly, Masayoshi Son, very observant of his own legacy here,

01:45but is this really the way to, you know, do what he wants to achieve?

01:51Well, it's a reminder that we're still in this environment where the infrastructure of AI

01:57is front and centre for these executives.

02:00You have the spending plans in terms of the sovereign data push that's really being led

02:04by OpenAI and SoftBank in the UAE, and you had Trump announcements around that,

02:09hundreds of billions of dollars.

02:10You've had hundreds of billions committed already to data centres in the U.S.

02:13You've had a trickle in terms of what's been committed in Europe and the U.K.

02:17The focus on making sure the infrastructure is in place so you can kind of drive down costs

02:20and make sure that you can diffuse this technology as widely and broadly as possible

02:24still seems to be front and centre.

02:26So, let's get started.

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