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SoftBank Group Corp. Chief Executive Officer Masayoshi Son told President-elect Donald Trump he would create 50,000 new jobs in the U.S. through a $50 billion investment in startups and new companies.
The money will come from SoftBank's previously announced $100 billion technology fund, according to a person familiar with the matter. That investment vehicle has a $45 billion commitment from the government of Saudi Arabia and $25 billion from Tokyo-based SoftBank, which operates technology and wireless companies around the world.
[...] Some investments from SoftBank's fund, which was unveiled in October, were probably destined for the U.S. anyway, given the nation's leadership in the global technology industry. But Son hadn't previously committed to creating a specific amount of jobs through the investment vehicle.
More coverage from Washington Post and Reuters.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday December 07 2016, @08:24PM
Yea, about them. Apple still mints money but I wouldn't call a company approaching forty years old a scrappy startup. Oracle has settled down into a dividend paying utility. Microsoft has been stagnant since the .bomb went off in 2000, their valuation only very recently topped their 20th century high point. Google is of course Google. All praise Google for it sees all, knows all. It also produces economic value.
I'm talking about useless fuckwads with multi-billion dollar fortunes who haven't in fact created a dollar of real wealth, never actually made a profit. And their King is Jeff Bezos. The second they can't cover their losses from selling things with converting some of their ever expanding market cap they are done. It really isn't hard to sell stuff over the Internet if you aren't concerned with details like making money at it. Lots of people will suddenly succeed at it the second Wall Street stops subsidizing the one guy they have picked to be the winner of e-commerce. And social media is a fantasy when it comes to the book valuations of those companies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @09:24PM
Uh, maybe look at MSFT again, you're requoting the "common knowledge" from about 10 years ago. Quit reading the rest of your post since the statement about MS marked you as ignorant of what you were talking about.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 07 2016, @09:30PM
> And their King is Jeff Bezos.
Of all the poster children for the role of emperor with no clothes in silicon valley you picked the one that's (a) not in silicon valley and (b) has tons of real-world, tangible infrastructure and (c) is cash-flow positive by a million miles. A much better target for your vitriol would be Peter Thiel who got rich on paypal and facebook and blew billions in paper money [businessinsider.com] on a now defunct hedge fund.
But this isn't about reality, is it? Its about you telling stories to yourself in public because the more times you write them out, the more true they feel to you. Like a kind of self-hypnosis.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday December 07 2016, @11:36PM
Oh really. Amazon, as of the end of 2015, has a net worth of $9,625,000,000. Contrast to a market valuation at close of trade today of about $366B. Yes they have impressive sales numbers, but it is hard not to when your model is lose money on every sale and make it up with market cap. The question is how much sales volume would exist if they had to book a healthy enough profit margin to maintain a $365B market cap based on actual financial reality, with real GAAP accounting.
When I run a search on "Amazon profits over time" all I get are hits with titles like "Why Amazon has no profits (and why it works)", "Amazon earnings: How Jeff Bezos gets investors to believe in him", "The internal economics of Amazon's No Profit model", etc. Startups aren't expected to turn an immediate profit, but Amazon is entering their third decade now. Yet somehow an endless stream of money is being directed their way to keep anyone else from entering the space. Fake economics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @12:00AM
> Oh really. Amazon, as of the end of 2015, has a net worth of $9,625,000,000. Contrast to a market valuation at close of trade today of about $366B.
Amazon has a price to book value of about 20.50. [yahoo.com] That's high, but not outrageous.
Boeing's is 45.6 [yahoo.com]
Netflix's is 21.28 [yahoo.com]
> When I run a search on "Amazon profits over time" all I get are hits with titles like
None of us are surprised that your shitty googling skills are your basis for judging amazon's business. Really.
Amazon has deliberately been taking all of that positive cash flow and investing it infrastructure rather than paying it out as dividends, letting it sit unused in the bank or wasting it on stock buybacks. All that money is being re-invested back into the company. That is literally the best possible use for the money if the goal is to create something tangible and long lasting.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmorris on Thursday December 08 2016, @12:29AM
The numbers cited are from finance.yahoo.com and, unless they can't even deliver official records anymore, be the actual audited financial records. They can blow smoke about investing in infrastructure but net assets, that is assets minus liabilities, are only about $10B. $365B of market cap buys you about $10B (plus any net assets built up in '16 which aren't on the books yet) plus you are buying their revenue stream, which as I pointed out isn't likely to remain if they want to make a profit.
And you willfully missed the point, I was pointing out that I'm not the only one to notice the conspicuous lack of profits. Contrast to Google, which has a $535B market cap but only a P/E of 28.23. They show net assets of $134B. They are actually a real company earning some real money.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 08 2016, @05:29AM
> The numbers cited are from finance.yahoo.com and, unless they can't even deliver official records anymore, be the actual audited financial records.
Your lead criticisim is the source of the numbers? When you didn't even provide a citation for your numbers?
What are you, twelve years old?
> And you willfully missed the point, I was pointing out that I'm not the only one to notice the conspicuous lack of profits
Oh, is that some kind of argumentum ad populum fallacy?
Because if you had actually read any of those articles you cited you would have seen they said exactly what I said about what Amazon has been doing with their profits.
You really are in high school aren't you? Youngest soybean here. Mentally, at least