Three years ago in the gilded lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, two ebullient billionaires stood in front of reporters and made big promises. One was Donald Trump, who just weeks prior had pulled an upset victory against Hillary Clinton to become president of the United States. The other was Masayoshi Son, billionaire founder and CEO of Japan’s SoftBank and executor of a newly formed $100 billion investment vehicle named the Vision Fund. 

Trump had campaigned on the promise of bringing jobs back to America, and companies from Alibaba to Amazon pledged to do their part. Son, whose firm SoftBank owns telecom giant Sprint, had seen a merger with T-Mobile stall under the Obama administration over anti-competitive concerns. So on December 6, 2016, Son stood in the Trump Tower lobby to make his play. The Japanese billionaire could start over with Trump. 

“Ladies and gentlemen, this is Masa of SoftBank of Japan and he has just agreed to invest $50 billion in the U.S. and [create] 50,000 jobs,” then President-elect Trump said at the time. The promise, according to a sheet of paper that Masa held up in the building lobby, would be completed in four years’ time, coinciding with Trump’s first term in office.

Now, three years later, Son is close to the $50 billion mark, a year ahead of schedule. A SoftBank spokesperson says the Vision Fund and other SoftBank vehicles have poured $47 billion into the U.S. economy by way of investing in dozens of companies, from Silicon Valley darlings like messaging app Slack to food delivery service DoorDash. Nearly half, a reported $18.5 billion went to co-working startup WeWork.

Whether all that money has translated into the promised 50,000 jobs is difficult to determine. SoftBank would not provide an estimate of how many jobs it has created in the U.S. since Son’s pledge. Because the majority of the Vision Fund’s investments have gone to private companies, public data is not available, making it hard to hold Son accountable for his promise. A recent move to cut costs among SoftBank’s biggest portfolio companies could put any known gains in jeopardy, as well. Many of Son’s biggest investments, from Uber to WeWork to online car-leasing startup Fair, have laid off thousands of employees in recent months to stem further losses.

If Son does fall short of his job-making target, he would have company: Other corporations, such as Foxconn and Alibaba, that made U.S. job creation promises shortly after the election have failed to meet those goals. Still, a new presidential term will likely usher in a new round of pledges from company leaders. Trump is already touting his jobs credentials, claiming nearly seven million jobs have been added in the U.S. since his election. CEOs will take notice.

“People are constantly trying to curry favor” with the deals, says Robert Scott, a senior economist at the pro-labor Economic Policy Institute. “They bring [Trump] favors and they know he likes press releases.” 

Son, like other CEOs who made jobs promises to Trump after his victory, had already been planning to invest in the U.S. before Trump won. Just a month before the November 2016 election, Son had decided to continue his investing success after hits like Yahoo and Alibaba and staked his legacy on the new Vision Fund. The $100 billion colossus would invest in cutting-edge tech startups around the world. Backed by investors from Saudi Arabia to Apple, Son and his team started pouring money into Silicon Valley—at a minimum of $100 million per investment. 

By 2018, it looked like Son had already fulfilled his promise to Trump. “[Son’s] $50 billion turned out to be $72 billion so far, he’s not finished yet,” Trump claimed at a June 2018 groundbreaking ceremony in Wisconsin for a new factory for Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer founded by billionaire Terry Gou, a close friend of Son’s. 

That wasn’t the case, SoftBank now says. (The White House didn’t comment on the different numbers.)

Even so, SoftBank’s Vision Fund was spending tens of billions on U.S. startups. It became known for writing huge checks that boosted companies’ valuations past the $1 billion mark. It made its largest money dump on WeWork—a reported $18.5 billion invested by a combination of SoftBank and the Vision Fund. SoftBank spent another sizable chunk on Uber, investing around $9 billion in early 2018. 

The big checks were supposed to turn into jobs. Getting to 50,000, however, would be hard. Son favored nascent technology like robotics and artificial intelligence, and startups in those fields tend to be small. With the exception of Uber, which counts over 13,000 U.S. employees, dozens of the Vision Fund’s portfolio companies employ only a couple hundred people each. 

Forbes reached out to over 50 SoftBank-backed portfolio companies that are either U.S.-based or have a U.S. presence to track SoftBank-backed job growth. Most declined to comment. Those that did comment told of merely incremental gains. Petuum, a Pennsylvania-based artificial intelligence company, said it added 120 employees to its workforce after SoftBank invested in October 2017. U.K.-based bank OakNorth had used SoftBank’s money to help expand its workforce globally to 750, but that only increased its headcount from four U.S. staffers to 23. 

Several startups that Forbes spoke to also challenged the idea that SoftBank should even take credit for their new employees because, in some cases, SoftBank did not lead new rounds of investment. “It would be inaccurate and factually wrong to credit job growth to SoftBank’s investment,” one person close to a SoftBank-backed startup said.

Some of its Vision Fund’s largest investments are reducing headcount as they face pressure to become profitable. WeWork announced plans in November to shed 4,000 employees globally after the ousting of its billionaire cofounder and CEO, Adam Neumann. Uber has reportedly laid off over 1,000 employees since July, the majority in the U.S. In October, Fair, a car rental firm, cut 40% of its workforce, or around 200 jobs. Pre-fab construction company Katerra reportedly laid off hundreds of its employees and recently shuttered an Arizona factory. 

One of the biggest SoftBank corporate investments, Sprint, has reported a roughly flat headcount of about 30,000 since 2016. Yet like some of the Vision Fund’s other big bets, it also risks job cuts, this time related to its merger with T-Mobile. The Justice Department finally approved the $26 billion deal earlier this year. 

But even that wished-for union may land slightly askew for Son. This week a judge started to hear a lawsuit by 14 attorneys general suing to stop the union of T-Mobile and Sprint, arguing that consumers would be worse off under a merged company. 

Son’s got one year left to make good on the promise he made at Trump Tower. Looks like the voracious dealmaker will need to stay in the game.