June 20 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group founder
Masayoshi Son is envisaging setting up a $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 ( TSM ) 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 ( SSNLF ), 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 centre
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.
(Reporting by Anusha Shah in Bengaluru, and Anton Bridge and
Sam Nussey in Tokyo; Editing by Janane Venkatraman and
Muralikumar Anantharaman)