Masayoshi Son: AI Investment Will Reach $5 Trillion a Year by 2040

SoftBank's president and founder Masayoshi Son presented a vision on Monday in Tokyo in which spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure will need to reach $5 trillion a year by 2040. He was speaking at the company's annual SoftBank World conference, where he also dismissed concerns about an AI speculative bubble, calling the very question absurd.

The $5 trillion math

Son laid out a specific figure: $5 trillion, or 800 trillion yen, a year that he believes the world will need to invest in AI infrastructure by 2040. The sum covers data centers, power supply, and humanoid robots, which in his vision are set to take over some of the work currently done by humans.

The figure sounds enormous, but Son immediately built an economic case for it. If AI-generated revenue accounts for 20 percent of global GDP by 2040, spending 800 trillion yen a year would become, as he put it, a rounding error on the scale of the entire economy. He did not explain in detail where the $5 trillion figure came from, nor exactly how he calculated AI's share of global GDP.

Every year, $5 trillion, or 800 trillion yen. You might think that's a lie, but I am certain of it. - Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank Group

Bubble talk is absurd

For months, the tech and financial industries have been debating whether AI-related valuations have detached from fundamentals. Son firmly dismissed those concerns during his appearance in Tokyo.

The question of whether AI is a bubble is absurd. I don't think people who ask that question understand what AI is about. - Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank Group

Power and robots

A key element of Son's forecast is energy demand. According to him, data centers running AI will need 3 terawatts of power by 2040, equivalent to 1.8 times the entire current global electricity consumption. In the first phase, that demand is expected to be met mainly by gas-fired power plants, before nuclear fusion becomes the main energy source.

Son also described a social scenario for 2040 in which 100 trillion autonomous AI agents operate, making their own decisions, carrying out tasks, and communicating with one another. He spoke of a shift from a human-centered world to one organized around AI agents.

SoftBank goes all in

Son's declarations are not just futurology. For two years, SoftBank has been genuinely redirecting capital toward AI. The group has invested tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI, and the cumulative value of that commitment is expected to exceed $60 billion by the end of 2026. On top of that comes financing for data centers and robotics companies worldwide, including a planned AI data hub in France worth roughly $88 billion.

For Polish companies and investors, these figures are above all a signal of the scale at which the largest tech companies plan to spend on AI infrastructure in the coming years. The scale of SoftBank's investments and those of similar players translates directly into global demand for chips, memory, and computing power, effects felt even in smaller markets, including Poland, where component prices and the availability of computing capacity are rising alongside the global investment boom.

Son's remarks also feed into a broader dispute over whether the current pace of AI investment is rational or is overheating the market. While some investors and regulators, including the U.S. Treasury Department, warn of the risk of a debt-fueled bubble bursting, Son is moving in the opposite direction, declaring his readiness for even larger capital commitments.

The next test for this strategy will be SoftBank's financial results and the pace at which the group's portfolio companies, from OpenAI to robotics firms, begin generating revenue that justifies the scale of spending already made and planned.

Sources: SoftBank's Son says AI boom will require $5tn in annual investment (Nikkei Asia), SoftBank's Son says AI will need $5 trillion per year by 2040, dismisses bubble talk (Yahoo Finance)