SoftBank plans $1 trillion AI & robotics Arizona hub in collaboration with TSMC and Trump's administration

SoftBank is among the prominent companies that will be joining forces with OpenAI, Oracle and MGX to invest up to $500 billion in AI infrastructure and data centers as part of the Stargate project initiated by the Trump administration back in January this year. This joint venture, however, pales in comparison to what SoftBank’s founder Masayoshi Son is now planning to build in the US. According to sources close to Bloomberg, Son pitched this grand plan to TSMC and Trump’s administration, and, if all parties agree, a large Arizona complex focusing on AI and robotics could soon be built with investments cumulating $1 trillion.

All this is still part of the concentrated efforts to bring back high-tech manufacturing to the US with a particular focus on robotics, as well as industrial AI-powered infrastructure, and Son believes the $1 trillion Arizona hub codenamed “Project Crystal Land” could essentially rival the Shenzhen complex in China.

Bloomerg’s sources claim that TSMC has not yet offered an official statement regarding its position towards this endeavor, but apparently, this project is not linked in any way to TSMC’s chip fabs from Phoenix, Arizona, which recently started production on advanced N4 nodes for a wide range of products including Nvidia's GPUs.

On the other hand, SoftBank is trying to benefit from substantial tax breaks for the colossal investment, and Bloomberg’s source mention planned talks with US federal and state government officials, including Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.

Son realizes that SoftBank cannot fund this endeavor alone so it is also seeking to partner with other tech giants like Samsung. Some of the companies that benefit from SoftBank’s Vision Fund such as Agile Robots SE and the soon-to-be-acquired Ampere Computing LLC are expected to set up production facilities at the future Arizona hub.