During a Monday appearance at President-elect Donald Trump’s residence Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump and the CEO of Japanese tech conglomerate SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, announced a $100 billion investment effort designed to spur artificial intelligence and related infrastructure projects.

Trump said in his joint appearance with the billionaire investor/founder of the Japanese tech-investing firm that the investment would create 100,000 jobs focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and related infrastructure, with the money to be deployed before the end of Trump’s term. Son said: “My confidence level to the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory. President Trump is a double down president. I’m going to have to double down.” (Per CNBC.). Trump called Son “one of the most accomplished business leaders of our time.”

Trump and Son announced a similar initiative in 2016 after Trump was elected president for the first time, with the Japanese firm agreeing to invest $50 billion in the U.S. with the aim to create 50,000 jobs.  Earlier this month, Amazon and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, each announced $1 million contributions to Trump’s inaugural fund, as have OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and the AI startup Perplexity.

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