Japan’s SoftBank Takes ‘First Step’ To Fulfill Pledge To Trump; Invests $1 Billion In US Satellite Startup OneWeb

Japan’s SoftBank announced Monday that it had agreed to invest $1 billion in the U.S. tech company OneWeb Ltd., which plans to build and deploy a constellation of hundreds of internet-beaming satellites in low-Earth orbit over the next decade. The $1 billion investment by the Japanese tech giant is the largest among the $1.2 billion in capital raised by OneWeb from its existing investors.

The investment comes just days after SoftBank Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son met with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, and pledged to create 50,000 jobs and invest $50 billion in American startups.

SoftBank’s investment would support satellite manufacturing at a new facility in Florida, and is expected to create nearly 3,000 new U.S. jobs over the next four years, the company said.

“Earlier this month I met with President-Elect Trump and shared my commitment to investing and creating jobs in the U.S. This is the first step in that commitment,” Son said in a statement. “America has always been at the forefront of innovation and technological development and we are thrilled to be playing a part in continuing to drive that growth as we work to create a truly globally connected ecosystem.”

SoftBank, which started as a software distribution company in 1981, has been steadily upping its investments in the tech sector in recent years. In addition to its significant stakes in the Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba, the U.S. wireless operator Sprint, and partnering with Saudi Arabia to create a technology investment fund that may manage as much as $100 billion, the company has also established a presence in the chip-making sector with a $32 billion acquisition of the U.K. chip designer ARM Holdings.

Meanwhile, OneWeb, which started out in 2012 and recently announced a joint manufacturing venture with Airbus, aims to “fully bridge the Digital Divide by 2027, making Internet access available and affordable for everyone.”

In order to achieve this ambitious goal, the company plans to begin with an initial launch of 10 satellites in early 2018, and eventually design, build and deploy nearly 700 satellites in low-Earth orbit.

“The plan was that the $500 million raised in June of 2015 would last us about 18 months,” OneWeb founder Greg Wyler told SpaceNews. “Then, in that time, we would raise another $500 million, and about a year after that we would raise another $500 million. With SoftBank we raised the B round and compressed the B and the C rounds together.”