Saudi Arabia invests another US$45 billion with SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to pick tech winners
The oil-rich kingdom is investing its petroleum wealth into technology companies including Uber Technologies and Tesla
Saudi Arabia is preparing to double-down on its bet that Masayoshi Son can pick the technology giants of the future. The country’s sovereign fund will make another US$45 billion investment in Son’s second massive Vision Fund.
The Public Investment Fund, or PIF, is set to make the investment as it looks for ways to deploy a US$170 billion windfall it is expecting over the next three-to-four years. That money would come from the sale of a stake in Saudi Basic Industries Corp and the initial public offering of state oil company Saudi Aramco, according to PIF chairman Mohammed Bin Salman -- who is also Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince.
The PIF wants to be a key investor in the second US$100 billion investment fund that SoftBank Group Corp chief executive Son plans to raise, Prince Mohammed said in an interview with Bloomberg. That would bring the PIF’s contribution to the two funds to US$90 billion, he said.
“We have a huge benefit from the first one,” he said. “We would not put, as PIF, another US$45 billion if we didn’t see huge income in the first year with the first $45 billion.”
Calls to SoftBank by Bloomberg News outside business hours went unanswered.
Since unveiling a strategy in 2016 to transform the PIF from a sleepy domestic holding company into the world’s largest sovereign fund, it has made a series of bold investments. Many have focused on technology companies yet to make a profit. In addition to its commitment to the first Vision Fund, the PIF made a US$3.5 billion investment in Uber Technologies, built up an almost 5 per cent stake in Tesla and then put US$1 billion into its rival, Lucid. The PIF also agreed to put US$20 billion into a US infrastructure fund run by Blackstone Group.