Japanese Company Pours $50 Million Into Trump Presidential Library

AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson

According to a Friday exclusive from Politico, Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group quietly donated $50 million to President Donald Trump’s future presidential library and foundation — one of the largest publicly known contributions to the project so far.

Politico’s Daniel Lippman reported, per two people familiar with the matter, that the donation is for a section of the library planned on the U.S.-Japan alliance, specifically the economic and strategic cooperation between the two countries.

As the report notes, SoftBank — one of the world’s largest investors in artificial intelligence and a major backer of OpenAI — has maintained close ties with Trump throughout both of his administrations. Founder and chair Masayoshi Son has appeared alongside the president multiple times at the White House, and even promised to invest $100 billion into U.S. companies during his second term in 2024.

The company also actively lobbies the federal government on AI and technology policy issues, according to recent disclosure filings cited by Politico.

Lippman went on to disclose, according to one of his two sources, that while SoftBank previously donated to the presidential libraries of former President Ronald Reagan and former President George W. Bush, those contributions came after the libraries had already been completed.

Per Politico, spokespeople from the Trump library and SoftBank refused to comment.

As Mediaite noted in March, when first renderings of the planned Miami building were released, the skyscraper bears a resemblance to New York City’s One World Trade Center, but with Trump’s name clearly atop it. As Politico notes, it will also be the home of Trump’s new Boeing jet — a gift from the Qatari royal family.

Other funds for the Trump library effort, as Lippman points out, come in the form of lawsuit settlements with the president from major media and tech firms like Meta, X, Paramount Global, and ABC News.

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