Trump to Announce $100B SoftBank Investment in the US

House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, President-elect Donald Trump, from third left, Vice President-elect JD Vance and Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, attend the NCAA college football game between Army and Navy at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, President-elect Donald Trump, from third left, Vice President-elect JD Vance and Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, attend the NCAA college football game between Army and Navy at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
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Trump to Announce $100B SoftBank Investment in the US

House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, President-elect Donald Trump, from third left, Vice President-elect JD Vance and Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, attend the NCAA college football game between Army and Navy at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
House Speaker Mike Johnson, left, President-elect Donald Trump, from third left, Vice President-elect JD Vance and Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, attend the NCAA college football game between Army and Navy at Northwest Stadium in Landover, Md., Saturday, Dec. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

US President-elect Donald Trump will join SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son at his Florida home on Monday to announce that the company is planning to invest $100 billion in US projects over the next four years.

That's according to a person familiar with the plans who spoke on condition of anonymity before the planned announcement. Trump is set to speak at his Mar-a-Lago resort at 11 a.m., marking the first time he will address reporters since he won the election last month, The AP reported.

Japanese technology group SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.

The company's investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.

The announcement will come days after Trump vowed to expedite federal permits for energy projects and other construction worth more than $1 billion.

In a post on his Truth Social site Tuesday, Trump said anyone making a $1 billion investment in the United States “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including, but in no way limited to, all Environmental approvals.”

“GET READY TO ROCK!!!” he added.

The announcement was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.



Italy Fines OpenAI over ChatGPT Privacy Rules Breach

The Italian watchdog also ordered OpenAI to launch a six-month campaign on Italian media to raise public awareness about how ChatGPT works - Reuters
The Italian watchdog also ordered OpenAI to launch a six-month campaign on Italian media to raise public awareness about how ChatGPT works - Reuters
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Italy Fines OpenAI over ChatGPT Privacy Rules Breach

The Italian watchdog also ordered OpenAI to launch a six-month campaign on Italian media to raise public awareness about how ChatGPT works - Reuters
The Italian watchdog also ordered OpenAI to launch a six-month campaign on Italian media to raise public awareness about how ChatGPT works - Reuters

Italy's data protection agency said on Friday it fined ChatGPT maker OpenAI 15 million euros ($15.58 million) after closing an investigation into use of personal data by the generative artificial intelligence application.

The fine comes after the authority found OpenAI processed users' personal data to "train ChatGPT without having an adequate legal basis and violated the principle of transparency and the related information obligations towards users".

OpenAI said the decision was "disproportionate" and that the company will file an appeal against it.

The investigation, which started in 2023, also concluded that the US-based company did not have an adequate age verification system in place to prevent children under the age of 13 from being exposed to inappropriate AI-generated content, the authority said, Reuters reported.

The Italian watchdog also ordered OpenAI to launch a six-month campaign on Italian media to raise public awareness about how ChatGPT works, particularly as regards to data collection of users and non-users to train algorithms.

Italy's authority, known as Garante, is one of the European Union's most proactive regulators in assessing AI platform compliance with the bloc's data privacy regime.

Last year it briefly banned the use of ChatGPT in Italy over alleged breaches of EU privacy rules.

The service was reactivated after Microsoft-backed OpenAI addressed issues concerning, among other things, the right of users to refuse consent for the use of personal data to train the algorithms.

"They've since recognised our industry-leading approach to protecting privacy in AI, yet this fine is nearly twenty times the revenue we made in Italy during the relevant period," OpenAI said, adding the Garante's approach "undermines Italy's AI ambitions".

The regulator said the size of its 15-million-euro fine was calculated taking into account OpenAI's "cooperative stance", suggesting the fine could have been even bigger.

Under the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced in 2018, any company found to have broken rules faces fines of up to 20 million euros or 4% of its global turnover.