NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- President-elect Donald Trump is claiming credit for a $50 billion investment in the United States by a Japanese tech conglomerate -- a deal he says wouldn't have happened without him.
The company, Softbank, hasn't given details. But in October, weeks before the election, Softbank and the government of Saudi Arabia agreed to form a $100 billion fund to invest in technology companies around the world.
Trump tweeted the news Tuesday afternoon: "Masa (SoftBank) of Japan has agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. toward businesses and 50,000 new jobs," he wrote. "Masa said he would never do this had we (Trump) not won the election!"
At about the same time, the president-elect made a brief appearance with Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son at Trump Tower.
Softbank has huge stakes in wireless, broadband, internet, e-commerce, chipmaking and gadget businesses. It's one of the largest telecommunications companies in Japan, and it was the first Japanese cell phone carrier to sell the iPhone.
Softbank bought 70% of Sprint for $20 billion in 2012. It also has enormous stakes in the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, Yahoo Japan and smartphone chip designer ARM. And it has partnered with Foxconn on its robotics business, most notably making Pepper, the robot pal that learns to love people.
Son, the company's idiosyncratic CEO, put together a 300-year plan for Softbank that calls for it to help permanently break down language barriers and allow people to communicate telepathically.
Softbank wants to build computers that invent new machines and raise the human life expectancy to 200 years.
Stock in Sprint, which is owned by SoftBank, immediately jumped more than 2%.
The-CNN-Wire
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