AI Moves: SoftBank’s $1 Trillion Hub, X's Probe, BBC’s Perplexity Lawsuit And More

As artificial intelligence (AI) technology continues to enhance operations, boost productivity, and reform industries, AI companies find themselves investing more time, money, and resources into upgrading their offerings.

Keeping to this thought, SoftBank Group’s Founder and CEO Masayoshi Son spoke of plans to invest $1 trillion to establish an industrial complex in Arizona to develop AI products and build robots, according to a report by Bloomberg that cited people familiar with the matter.

The proposed amount is double that of Project Stargate, in which SoftBank is also involved.

Son intends to team up with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for the project, which is code-named Project Crystal Land. The idea is to enable high-end technology manufacturing in the United States, mirroring China’s Shenzhen manufacturing hub.

However, there is no clarity if TSMC is interested in getting involved, as the firm is already building chip manufacturing facilities, AKA fabs, in the country, which includes planned investments of $165 billion.

Reportedly, SoftBank executives have discussed potential tax breaks for companies investing in the park or setting up chipmaking factories with U.S. federal and state government officials, including U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick.

SoftBank, TSMC, the White House, and the U.S. Department of Commerce did not comment on the matter. 


While SoftBank’s ambitious plan remains uncertain, Texas Instruments (TI) announced more concrete moves.

The globally renowned chipmaker plans to invest more than $60 billion across seven U.S. semiconductor fabs, marking the largest investment in foundational semiconductor manufacturing in U.S. history.

Foundational semiconductors are microchips that are used in electronics used by people every day, including vehicles, smartphones, and data centers.

TSMC’s plans also include partnering with NVIDIA to unleash the next generation of AI architectures and infrastructure.

The company’s investments span building and ramping seven large-scale, connected fabs across three manufacturing mega-sites in Texas and Utah, which will manufacture hundreds of millions of chips and enable over 60,000 jobs in the country.

In Sherman, Texas, TI’s first new fab, SM1, is scheduled to begin initial production this year—three years after breaking ground—while its SM2, the second new fab, has completed construction. TI has plans to add SM3 and SM4 in the future.

RFAB2, TI’s second fab in Richardson, Texas, and LFAB2 in Lehi, Utah, are also under construction, preparing to join the company’s existing fabs, RFAB1 and LFAB1, respectively. RFAB1 is known for introducing the world’s first 300mm analog fab in 2011, while LFAB1 is the company’s first 300mm wafer fab in Lehi.

“TI is building dependable, low-cost 300mm capacity at scale to deliver the analog and embedded processing chips that are vital for nearly every type of electronic system,” said Haviv Ilan, President and CEO of Texas Instruments.

“Leading U.S. companies such as Apple, Ford, Medtronic, NVIDIA and SpaceX rely on TI’s world-class technology and manufacturing expertise, and we are honored to work alongside them and the U.S. government to unleash what’s next in American innovation.”

TSMC’s news release also consists of quotes from the CEOs of Apple (Tim Cook), Ford (Jim Farley), Medtronic (Geoff Martha), and NVIDIA (Jensen Huang), along with SpaceX’s COO (Gwynne Shotwell).


In the past few days, social media giant Meta has made similar moves, albeit to enhance its internal operations more than its infrastructure.

The company invested around $14.8 billion in Scale AI, a data-labeling company, for a 49% stake. The move resulted in Scale AI losing its largest customer, Google, as well as OpenAI.

Around the same time, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, revealed that Meta was offering OpenAI employees bonuses of $100 million to join them in its superintelligence efforts.

Prior to this, Meta introduced its dedicated AI assistant app—Meta AI.

Now, Meta is in talks to hire former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, as well as Friedman's partner at NFDG (the Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross investment firm) to help advance its AI efforts, according to reports. The attempt to lure the two could also come with a partial buyout of NFDG.

Interestingly, Nat Friedman is part of Meta's Advisory Group, which is an external advisory council that guides Meta on technology and product development.


While the money is being poured into boosting AI technology and infrastructure, not all AI companies are cruising smoothly towards this dream.

The United Kingdom’s BBC is threatening legal action against U.S. AI startup Perplexity for having its chatbot illegally reproduce BBC content “verbatim.” As such, the BBC has written a letter to Perplexity to immediately stop using BBC content and delete any content held, while proposing that the AI company offer financial compensation for content already used.

Sticking to Europe, the European Union (EU) is looking for details from Elon Musk's X about changes to its corporate structure, following the recent sale of X to xAI for $33 billion, which would bring xAI’s AI assistant—Grok—better training data.

While a European Commission (EC) spokesperson didn’t confirm if the regulatory body plans to impose fines under the Digital Services Act (DSA), they did say the agency was “following closely changes in the corporate structure of X, as we would changes in any other designated platform.” 

Ahead of this, Pope Leo XIV plans to make the threat of AI to humanity a key issue of his legacy, saying he intends to “respond to another industrial revolution and to innovations in the field of artificial intelligence that pose challenges to human dignity, justice, and labor.”

What do you make of the latest problematic developments in the AI world? What do you think of SoftBank’s ambitious $1 trillion plan?

Let us know in the comments below!