The Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group gave $50 million to Donald Trump’s presidential library in January 2026 — two months before the Trump administration approved a federal land lease that will allow the firm to build what could become the world’s largest artificial intelligence data center.
The company confirmed the timing of its donation in a written response to Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., who released the letter Thursday.
The White House referred questions to the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library Foundation, which did not respond to a request for comment. SoftBank and the U.S. Energy Department also did not respond.
Although the $50 million gift was reported earlier this year, its timing around the land lease deal remained unknown. The Democratic senators said SoftBank’s donation — the library’s largest known donation — came squarely within the timeframe in which SoftBank was seeking federal approval for its Ohio project.
“Are we expected to believe it’s a coincidence that two months after SoftBank donated $50 million to the Trump library, his administration announced a massive lease deal for SoftBank’s data center?” Warren said in a statement. “Again and again, it seems like Trump is putting handshake deals with CEOs over what’s best for Americans.”
The lawmakers highlighted a sequence of events that they questioned.
In December 2025, reports surfaced that SoftBank and the administration were discussing a plan to use money from Japan’s $550 billion U.S. investment commitment to build Trump-branded industrial parks across the country. By January, SoftBank’s proposal was reported to be on the short list for selection.
That same month, SoftBank donated $50 million to the Trump library.
Then, on March 20, the Department of Energy and the Department of Commerce announced the partnership with SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy to redevelop the former Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant near Piketon, Ohio — a Cold War-era uranium enrichment site — into a 10-gigawatt AI computing campus on roughly 3,700 acres of federal land. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son said the campus could draw up to $500 billion in private investment.
The Democrats say the arrangement let SoftBank sidestep permitting and regulatory steps that a private land project of that size would normally face. The Energy Department has described the lease as a way to put a decommissioned national security site back to work and argued SB Energy also committed to accelerated environmental cleanup of the area.
In its response, SoftBank did not answer the lawmakers’ question about whether the donation was connected to any commitment from the administration. The company said it understands the money will support the construction and operation of the planned Trump library in Miami, and that it understands part of the gift will aid a dedicated fund to strengthen the U.S.-Japan relations. SoftBank did not say whether it placed stipulations on how the $20 million donation to the Trump library foundation money is used.
The company also pointed to its past giving to the Reagan and George W. Bush foundations. But Democrats noted that those gifts were made after each of those presidents left office, according to a July 1 letter from Sens. Warren and Blumenthal and Reps. Stansbury, Jared Moskowitz of Florida and Jamie Raskin of Maryland.
SoftBank is one of the world’s largest AI investors and a major backer of OpenAI. In December 2024, weeks after Trump was re-elected, SoftBank’s CEO pledged to invest $100 billion in the U.S. over four years.
Other donations to the Trump Library Foundation are also under congressional scrutiny.
In July, Warren, Blumenthal and Stansbury noted that as much as $21.5 million paid by ABC, Meta and Paramount to the Trump Library Foundation as part of legal settlements is missing or has been spent without explanation.
Their letter also questioned roughly $7 million in spending — including $400,000 in compensation to unnamed “officers,” $490,000 in legal fees and about $6 million listed only as “other.” The foundation’s registration application states that none of its personnel are paid, including Eric Trump, the president’s son, who is a trustee. The lawmakers asked for the names of the officers who received the $400,000.
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