SoftBank’s boss Masayoshi Son used a Friday meeting in Seoul to say humans should stop thinking they can manage, teach, or control AI, according to information shared by presidential policy adviser Kim Yong-beom.
Masa told South Korean President Lee Jae Myung that Artificial Superintelligence will be “10,000 times smarter than people,” and he said the real task now is learning how to live with systems that will outthink every person on the planet.
That meeting came on the same day South Korea’s industry ministry and SoftBank’s Arm Holdings signed a formal agreement to strengthen the country’s semiconductor and AI programs.
Kim said the deal includes a plan for Arm to build a new chip design school in the country. He said the program will train 1,400 high-level chip designers so the country can boost its weak system-semiconductor and fabless areas.
Arm expands training push as South Korea builds out AI plans
Kim then said the new school will use expertise from Arm, the UK company that licenses chip designs and earns from royalties. He said the project is aimed at preparing talent for a market where AI-related chip needs keep increasing.
Lee is pushing a broad national plan to put South Korea among the world’s top three AI powers. He has held recent meetings with Sam Altman of OpenAI and Jensen Huang of Nvidia.
Chip deals linked to that push have already started. In October, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix signed letters of intent to supply memory chips for OpenAI’s data centers. Later that same month, Nvidia said it will ship more than 260,000 advanced AI chips to South Korea’s government and major domestic companies, including Samsung.
Those shipments support the country’s plan to build stronger local infrastructure for AI systems.
The meeting with Masa added another layer to those efforts, as Kim said the SoftBank chief expects AI growth to create a surge in chip demand. Masa told Lee that South Korea’s position in the global semiconductor chain will matter even more as AI systems spread across every industry.
Masa advances Trump-era industrial park plan for U.S. AI buildout
Masa is also moving ahead with a large U.S. project after months of talks with officials at the White House and the Commerce Department. The plan involves hundreds of billions of dollars to build Trump-branded industrial parks across the United States.
The facilities would sit on federal land and use Japanese government funding tied to a recent trade deal, and money could start flowing in early 2026.
The parks would produce equipment for AI infrastructure, including fiber-optic cable, data-center hardware, and later AI chips. According to SoftBank, Japanese tech firms will supply most of the technical know-how, while ownership of the completed facilities will go to the U.S. federal government. President Donald Trump has signaled support, with White House spokesman Kush Desai saying Trump’s ties with global business leaders are helping bring in large investment.
The plan still faces obstacles, but the scale reflects Masa’s long history of making huge bets. Some have made SoftBank tens of billions of dollars from early investments in Yahoo, Alibaba, and Arm Holdings. Others, like WeWork, turned into major losses.
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