SoftBank donates $50M to Trump's presidential library

In May 2026, SoftBank Group, the Japanese technology-investment conglomerate, donated $50 million to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, one of the largest publicly disclosed gifts to the fund, according to Politico, which cited two people familiar with the not-yet-public donation. The donation is intended to support a focus at the library on the U.S.-Japan relationship. SoftBank pledged in 2024 to invest $100 billion in American companies during Trump's term, is one of the world's largest artificial-intelligence investors and a major investor in OpenAI, holds controlling stakes in technology companies including a semiconductor chip designer, and lobbies on AI-related issues according to recent filings. SoftBank founder and chairman Masayoshi Son has known Trump since his first term and has visited the White House multiple times. The company previously made smaller donations to the Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush presidential libraries, but only after those libraries had been built. The Trump library, under construction in Miami, is raising hundreds of millions of dollars; other reported sources of funds include payments from ABC News, Paramount, X and Meta made as part of lawsuit settlements. Spokespeople for SoftBank and the Trump library declined to comment.