Trump and SoftBank Promise to Create 100,000 AI Jobs. It Won’t Be Easy.
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SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son stood besides President-elect Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago on Monday, and announced a commitment to invest $100 billion in the U.S. over the next four years—and create 100,000 jobs. The investments will be concentrated in AI.
“My confidence level to the economy of the United States has tremendously increased with his victory,” Son said at the news conference.
SoftBank is an investment holding company with a range of technology investments all over the world, but especially in the U.S. At the end of September, the total value of its investments was $136 billion, so the new commitment would represent a substantial expansion of SoftBank’s balance sheet.
Raising that sort of money may prove difficult, but the bigger obstacle could be the commitment on jobs—the focus on AI companies, in particular, complicates the goal. AI companies spend a lot on salaries, but these are some of the most expensive employees in the world right now. And they don’t tend to employ a lot of people overall
OpenAI, which has raised $18 billion and has a private market value of $157 billion, has 1,372 employees. To fulfill Trump and Son’s commitment, in other words, the investments would have to create 73 AI companies on the scale of OpenAI.
“A lot of advanced tech these days, including AI, is capital intensive and also highly dependent on high-paid skilled workers,” labor economist Guy Berger of the Burning Glass Institute told Barron’s . “I’m not sure how much head count $100 billion spread out over four years gets you.”
A selection of a dozen AI start-ups with valuations over a billion dollars reveals the uphill climb to the 100,000 jobs goal. These companies have raised a combined $42 billion and have an aggregate private market value of $309 billion, according to FactSet. Anthropic, which has raised almost $12 billion, has only 425 employees. All told, these companies employ less than 10,000 workers, an average of 785 workers per start-up.
Databricks, a data analytics start-up with a valuation of $43 billion, accounts for almost half of those employees. Excluding Databricks, the per start-up employee count falls to 399.
Other barriers in the labor market exist, as well. The overall unemployment rate is 4.2%, but narrow that down to workers with masters and doctoral degrees who are most likely to be AI employees, and the rate drops to 2.0% and 1.0%, respectively. In all, there are only 483,000 workers with advanced degrees looking for work, and most of them aren’t AI engineers.
“The labor market is not super loose right now,” Berger said. “A lot of gross jobs created here might simply involve reallocating people who already have jobs.”
Monday’s press conference recalled a similar one from 2016, when Trump and Son stood in the lobby of Trump Tower and promised $50 billion in U.S. investment and 50,000 jobs. SoftBank didn’t reply to a request for comment about the progress of that 2016 commitment.
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With US$40 million already committed, the Global Talent Fund is attracting investor attention with a strategy focused on building globally scalable consumer brands alongside high-profile talent.
2 min
A new investment fund targeting celebrity-founded consumer brands has secured US$40 million in commitments and is rapidly approaching its US$50 million fundraising target, signalling growing investor appetite for alternative opportunities beyond traditional asset classes.
The Global Talent Fund, which has a maximum raise of US$100 million, focuses on building and investing in consumer businesses alongside celebrities, athletes, and influential personalities who play an active role as co-founders rather than simply endorsing products.
The strategy is based on the belief that changes in consumer behaviour, particularly the rise of social media and digital engagement, have fundamentally altered how brands are built and scaled.
GTF founding partner Jeremy Hunt, who is helping lead the fund’s strategy, said consumers increasingly feel connected to personalities they follow online and are more willing to support products developed by those individuals.
“Consumers are searching for content to engage with, and when a celebrity they like or follow takes them on the journey of creating a product or brand, they genuinely feel part of that process,” he said.
The fund is targeting high-growth consumer sectors including wellness, hydration, beauty and recovery, areas Hunt believes continue to benefit from strong global demand and ongoing innovation.
Rather than backing celebrity endorsement deals, the fund is seeking businesses where talent is deeply involved in product development, brand creation and long-term growth.
According to Hunt, authenticity remains one of the biggest differentiators between successful celebrity-backed brands and those that fail.
“The consumer can see clearly if someone is simply being paid to promote a product,” he said. “The winners are typically the brands where the celebrity has genuinely helped build the business from the ground up.”
The model has attracted support from several prominent Australian investors and business families, reflecting broader interest in alternative investments with global growth potential.
Hunt said consumer brands offered a level of tangibility that many investors found appealing.
“Consumer brands are what we touch, feel, smell and taste every day,” he said. “Our investors understand the growth potential in the model, but they also want to be part of the journey.”
The fund’s rapid progress towards its fundraising target comes amid growing recognition that celebrity influence, when combined with strong commercial execution and scalable business models, can create significant enterprise value.
With several high-profile celebrity-founded businesses generating billion-dollar exits in recent years, supporters of the strategy believe the opportunity remains in its early stages.
For more information, contact marc@kanerbridge.com.au
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