Dubai: 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 $45 billion investment in Son’s massive Vision Fund.
The Public Investment Fund (PIF) is set to make the investment as it looks for ways to deploy a $170 billion windfall it’s 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 Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman.
The PIF wants to be a key investor in the second $100 billion investment fund that SoftBank Group Corp. CEO Son plans to raise, Prince Mohammad said. That would bring the PIF’s contribution to the two funds to $90 billion.
“We have a huge benefit from the first one,” he said. “We would not put, as PIF, another $45 billion if we didn’t see huge income in the first year with the first $45 billion.”
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 $3.5 billion investment in Uber Technologies Inc., built up an almost 5 per cent stake in Tesla Inc. and then put $1 billion into its rival, Lucid Inc.
The PIF also agreed to put $20 billion into a US infrastructure fund run by Blackstone Group LP.
