LORDSTOWN, Ohio – News outlet Bloomberg has reported that SoftBank Group Corp. is the entity behind the acquisition of Foxconn’s Lordstown manufacturing plant.
The purchase is intended to help launch the Japanese investment firm’s $500 billion Stargate data center project with partners OpenAI and Oracle Corp., Bloomberg said.
Bloomberg reported that SoftBank had approached Foxconn to secure a partnership to build artificial intelligence data centers in the United States. The sale of the Lordstown facility was part of the deal, the news agency reported.
Earlier this week, Hon Hai Precision Industry Inc., more commonly known as Foxconn, announced it had sold its Lordstown manufacturing facility and equipment to Crescent Dune LLC for $375 million. The plant is a 6.2 million square-foot factory that was built by General Motors during the mid-1960s and closed in 2019.
Electric vehicle startup Lordstown Motors Corp. purchased the plant that year, then sold it to Foxconn in 2022 with the intention to produce EV pickups there. Lordstown Motors eventually filed bankruptcy and liquidated.
The Stargate project is SoftBank’s plan to invest $500 billion to build AI data centers around the world over the next five years and has committed to investing $100 billion in the U.S. However, the project has been slow to roll out, SoftBank Chief Financial Officer, Yoshimitsu Goto said on a call with investors Aug. 7.