Mike Wuerthele
Apple is reportedly considering a $1 billion investment in SoftBank's $100 billion tech company investment fund, of which, the upcoming Trump administration is claiming $50 billion will be spent on U.S.-based businesses.
Sources for The Wall Street Journal claim that initial talks for Apple to join the SoftBank Technology fund have already happened, but no deal is yet finalized. The same sources claim that Apple would hope to get insight on emerging tech trends above and beyond its own research.
SoftBank founder and CEO Masayoshi Son met with Trump at the latter's transition team offices, located in Trump Tower in New York City, discussing the tech fund that Apple is said to be interested in. Son's fund is not yet completely built out, it has already accumulated $70 billion, and according to Son is "oversubscribed" with potential investors.
Should the investment fund get built successfully, Son has made a verbal agreement with the President-elect to invest $50 billion in the U.S. Trump claims that the deal would not have been possible had he not been elected.
SoftBank's CEO, Apple, and Foxconn have been intertwined for some time. Shortly after Trump's Tweet announcing the potential $50 billion deal with SoftBank, Son was seen carrying a paper trumpeting a U.S. deal involving it, and Foxconn. Foxconn declared that they would announce details of any plans "following the completion of direct discussions between our leadership and the relevant U.S. officials" and would be based on mutually agreeable terms.
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6 Comments
This is great news.
Apple will have a hand in the focus and use of said SoftBank funds. Just as with last weeks News of Apple investing their cash back home in bonds, this is further evidence of Apples good stewardship of the investors/owners wealth.
This will give Apple a safer avenue to use some of their overseas funds by investing in SoftBank. Depending on where the money is to be invested.
I think that Apple could just use cash parked offshore to inject into this fund. It's a good deal. I hope that apple uses its cash proactively.
Let's not forget that Softbank purchased ARM Holdings this year, for $32 billion.
This is the same ARM Holdings to whom Apple pays the "architectural license" for the rights to develop their Ax system-on-chip (SoC).
I.e. Apple pays ARM for the right to sell their own custom Ax SoC that run ARM's ISA - Instruction Set Architecture.
Costs Apple less per-chip and lets them build faster, more efficient SoCs than if they licensed ARM's "reference" SoC design.
So yes. Makes sense for Apple to invest in the company that owns the IP for their (current) bread-and-butter computing hardware architecture.
Sockrolid said:
So stipulating I know little to nothing about such things, I ask; Is Apple investing in the accumulating tech fund within SoftBank, or are they investing in SoftBank Inc? Either way, if they do invest, the good will with SoftBank will be favorable.
Point taken, Sockrolid.