On Monday, Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, Japan’s most famed and outspoken investor, joined President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate, where he enthusiastically pledged his firm will invest at least $100 billion in America-based projects in the next four years, which he said will create up to 100,000 jobs in artificial intelligence and emerging tech.

There’s just one thing the high-flying energy and telecom tycoon appears to be missing: $100 billion.

“Would You Make It $200 Billion?”

Monday’s gigantic pledge undoubtedly represents a PR victory for the incoming administration, and marks a notable vote of confidence in the US economy. It also echoes a $50 billion pledge SoftBank made in 2016, prior to Trump’s first term.

But that was then — when Son managed to convince a group of Middle East countries, led by Saudi Arabia, to pony up most of the money for a $100 billion venture capital fund. The so-called Vision Fund proceeded to make several bets that went sideways, most famously on perennially embattled coworking real estate firm WeWork and most hilariously on a robot pizza delivery startup where, unsurprisingly, both the wheels and pepperoni fell off when it shut down last year.

And this is now:

• While the Vision Fund unit has stabilized — reporting in the black in four of the past five quarters — the Saudi Public Investment Fund, Son’s previous biggest backer, pivoted earlier this year to investing more at home. As for other investors, SoftBank struggled to find any when it launched a second Vision Fund after its first round of investments raised eyebrows.
• Meanwhile, Softbank doesn’t have $100 billion of cash on hand, according to its latest financials, meaning there’s no immediate telling where the money will come from. As if there wasn’t enough pressure, Trump asked Son at a joint press conference, “Would you make it $200 billion?” to which he replied: “I will try.” At the very least, he enters a market where investors are clearly willing to back all things AI — more than half the $28 billion in venture capital deployed globally in November went to companies in the sector, Crunchbase data shows.

The past week has also seen prominent American firms, including Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Jeff Bezos’ Amazon, pledge $1 million to Trump’s inauguration committee, as corporate titans at home and abroad jockey for favorable status with his incoming administration.

Oh! Canada! The Trump effect even dramatically spilled into Canadian politics Monday. The highest ranking member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, Chrystia Freeland, resigned her posts as Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister and, in an open letter, said the country must make serious preparations to deal with the economic fallout of Trump’s plans to slap tariffs on foreign imports, including a 25% levy on Canadian goods.

Get ready for a much busier night sky. (No, this isn’t another story about whatever is going on in New Jersey.)

The European Union signed off on a contract to launch a satellite constellation through the European Space Agency (ESA). The project, called IRIS², has a €10.6 billion price tag and the costs will be split between the EU, the ESA, and the private sector. It’s part of the EU’s goal to build its own spacefaring infrastructure, reducing its dependence on US private companies for launches in general, and one company in particular.

Constellation Wars

Europe’s once promising satellite telecommunications industry has flagged in recent decades, with many companies specializing in placing geostationary satellites in high orbit, usually about 36,000 km (22,000 miles) above the earth. That’s in opposition to companies like Starlink, the satellite wing of US space giant SpaceX, which stick to low-earth orbit (LEO) at a maximum height of 2,000 km (1,200 miles). LEO satellites are good for telecommunications because, well, they’re closer, so they can receive and transmit data a lot faster. The promise of Starlink’s satellites has been to beam down the internet to parts of the world without good connectivity.

At the moment SpaceX is pretty dominant in the LEO satellite market, and currently has around 6,714 functioning satellites in orbit. Amazon also wants to launch its own satellite constellation, known as Project Kuiper, but hasn’t managed to actually send up any satellites yet, and with President Trump retaking the White House with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk as a confidante, SpaceX’s pole position looks even stronger than before. For Europe, that’s all the more reason to speed up its space plans:

• “In an increasingly complex geopolitical world, ensuring resilient, secure and fast governmental communications is essential,” Director General of the ESA Josef Aschbacher said in a statement.
• The way IRIS² is structured, the EU will pour €6 billion ($6.3 billion) into it while the private sector will contribute €4 billion ($4.2 billion), with the ESA kicking in the final €550 million ($577 million). The Financial Times reports the single biggest private sector investor will be French satellite company Eutelstat, which is contributing €2 billion.

Yet More Space Geopolitics: Europe isn’t the only world power racing to keep up with Starlink. China has three LEO satellite projects called Qianfan, Guo Wang, and Honghu-3, and per CNBC, the nation plans to eventually launch 38,000 satellites into low earth orbit. An extra motivating factor for China is that if Starlink’s internet footprint widens, it could potentially give Chinese netizens access to uncensored internet.

Turns out, mental health makes wealth. Bad mental health, on the other hand…

Whether it’s due to a post-pandemic hangover or the ill-effects of the 24/7 internet age, consensus opinion seems to be that a mental health crisis is plaguing the world. And according to a new analysis by the Financial Times, the crisis has had a surprisingly large impact on the workplace — and the global economy.

A Trillion Dollar Problem

A Gallup survey published last year found that nearly 18% of Americans had been or were being treated for depression, up 7% since 2015. The costs add up. A study from the World Health Organization found around 12 billion working days are lost every year to depression and anxiety, costing the economy a whopping $1 trillion.

“People ask whether we’re just measuring more mental illness because people are more willing to report it,” Kate Pickett, professor of epidemiology at York University, told the FT. “But the increase has been so huge that there is something real going on.”

Conversely, investing in the mental wellbeing of employees has paid off:

• In a study using data of over 1 million employee posts on Indeed, researchers at Oxford University found “a strong positive relationship between employee well-being and firm performance.”
• In fact, the researchers noted that a simulated portfolio featuring the 100 publicly traded companies with the best employee well-being scores on Indeed outperformed the S&P 500 by 11% between January 2021 and July 2024.

Adderall or Nothing: Surveys by both Deloitte and MindForward Alliance found that finance workers were particularly stressed out. And given the field’s notoriously grueling hours, particularly for junior staffers, who can be surprised? Relatedly: A Wall Street Journal investigation published this weekend found the industry’s junior staffers have grown alarmingly dependent on the ADHD medication Adderall to power through the long hours. We’re not doctors, but that doesn’t sound like the healthiest of habits.