Skip to main content

Sprint to return 5,000 jobs to U.S. following SoftBank’s $50B investment

softbank trump news
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Japanese conglomerate SoftBank will invest $50 billion in the United States and create 50,000 new jobs. That’s according to Donald Trump, who announced the news on Tuesday after a meeting with CEO Masayoshi Son at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Already, the deal’s beginning to manifest in tangible ways. In later December, Sprint announced that it would repatriate 5,000 jobs in the U.S. And OneWeb, a satellite internet startup backed by Softbank, will create as many as 3,000 new jobs in the coming months.

Recommended Videos

“We are excited to work with President-elect Trump and his Administration to do our part to drive economic growth and create jobs in the U.S.,” Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure said in a statement. “We believe it is critical for business and government to partner together to create more job opportunities in the U.S. and ensure prosperity for all Americans.”

Details of the arrangement were hard to come by, and the president-elect declined to elaborate. A presentation provided to media outlets showed an additional $7 billion investment and the creation of 50,000 additional jobs, and suggested that Foxconn, the China-based manufacturer notably responsible for assembling the iPhone, could play a role.

On December 7, Foxconn said it was in talks to expand to the U.S., but said that the scope and scale of its potential U.S. investments hadn’t been determined. Foxconn has facilities in Virginia, Indiana, California, and Texas.

The Wall Street Journal notes that Son and Foxconn Chairman Terry Gou are “longtime friends” who’ve collaborated on “several investments.” Most recently, the two launched a joint venture with Alibaba to sell the Japan-based company’s Pepper home robot.

But the terms might also involve Sprint, America’s fourth-largest cellular network, which SoftBank acquired in 2012. The embattled carrier, which hasn’t posted an annual profit since 2006, had announced a plan last year to reduce the number of its employees and cut between $2 billion and $2.5 billion in costs over the next six months. Its most recent quarterly losses drove a 30 percent dive in SoftBank’s overall profits.

Or the terms could refer to T-Mobile, which has a market capitalization of just above $45 billion. SoftBank led a failed bid to purchase the self-styled “Un-carrier” in 2013 and 2014.

SoftBank has operated with reluctance in the U.S., fearing regulators — principally the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice — would interfere with mergers of the scale it has pursued in other countries. The company invested $20 billion in Vodafone’s Japanese division. And in September, it completed a $31 billion acquisition of ARM Holdings, the firm responsible for designing processors and licensing them to Qualcomm, Apple, and others. Last year alone, ARM’s partners shipped 15 billion ARM-designed chips, half of which were bound for mobile devices.

Son told reporters he expected a lot of “deregulation” under Trump’s administration.

“I just came to celebrate his new job. We were talking about it. Then I said I would like to celebrate his presidential job and commit, because he would do a lot of deregulation,” Son told Reuters. “I said this is great. The United States will become great again.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, SoftBank’s $50 billion investment would come from the $100 billion fund the company will establish with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund and other partners. SoftBank expects to contribute between $25 billion and $45 billion over the next five years.

SoftBank is valued at an estimated $68 billion. Shares of the company rallied following Tuesday’s announcement, reaching their highest level in two and a half years and closing up 1.5 percent, and shares of T-Mobile rose 1.8 percent.

Article originally published on 12-07-2016. Updated on 12-30-2016 by Kyle Wiggers: Added news of Sprint jobs. 

Kyle Wiggers
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kyle Wiggers is a writer, Web designer, and podcaster with an acute interest in all things tech. When not reviewing gadgets…
Will my phone change for daylight saving time automatically?
The iPhone 14 Pro's Dynamic Island showing the timer and music playing.

It's that time of year once again. The leaves are changing, the weather is getting colder, and it's just about time to set your clocks back an hour. That's right! On Sunday, November 3, daylight saving time officially ends, and you'll need to set your clocks back an hour.

However, it’s important to know whether your phone will automatically change to daylight saving time or if you need to do it manually. It's a question that applies regardless of which phone you have. Whether you're rocking an iPhone 16, Google Pixel 9, Samsung Galaxy S24, or any other smartphone, it's essential to know whether or not you need to change it for the new time.

Read more
Updating your Samsung Galaxy S25 could be easier than ever
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra in Titanium Gray in hand.

When is the last time you updated your phone? Most people wait until it's time for bed, especially since updates can take upwards of an hour. No matter how cool the features might be, losing access to your phone for an extended period of time isn't fun. According to leaker Chun Bhai on X, the next Samsung flagship may come with a feature that makes updating easier and faster than ever.

This feature is called seamless updates. It allows the phone to download and install the update as a background process; you only need to restart your phone once it's finished to activate the update. Some phones have supported this feature for a while, but the only Samsung phone to currently support it is the Galaxy A55. The Galaxy S25 will be the first Samsung flagship to work with seamless updates.

Read more
Apple offers free repair for bad iPhone 14 Plus batch with camera woes
The iPhone 14 Plus's camera module.

Over the past few months, multiple reports have popped up on Reddit and Apple’s official product forum regarding an iPhone 14 Plus issue that renders a black screen instead of a frame preview in the camera app. It seems Apple has finally caught wind of the complaints and has launched a servicing program to help affected owners.

“Apple has determined that the rear camera on a very small percentage of iPhone 14 Plus devices may exhibit no preview. Affected devices were manufactured between April 10, 2023, to April 28, 2024,” says the company.

Read more