SoftBank Announces $93 Billion Fund With Public Investment Fund Of Saudi Arabia And Others

Japanese conglomerate SoftBank announced its first round of capital commitments of $93 Billion for its SoftBank Vision fund, to be invested in the technology sector.

The investors include Mubadala Investment Company of the United Arab Emirates, Apple Inc., Foxconn Technology Group, Qualcomm Incorporated and Sharp Corporation, in addition to SoftBank Group Corp and the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (PIF.)

A statement released by SoftBank said the fund is targeting a total of $100 Billion committed capital, with a final close within six months. The fund will be controlled by SoftBank’s wholly owned subsidiary of SB Investment Advisers that will be headed by India born Rajeev Misra, who is SoftBank’s head of strategic finance.

The fund will target long-term investments in companies and foundations and will seek to acquire majority and minority interests in both private and public companies. Along with this, the Fund will also have the right to acquire certain investments made by the SoftBank Group such as investments in electronic chipset technology firm ARM, Guardant Health, Intelsat, Nvidia, OneWeb, and SoFi, and other investments agreed to be acquired by SoftBank Group.

The Fund will be based in London and will allow CEO Masayoshi Son to cut more ambitious deals in a range of technology sectors including Internet of things (IoT,) artificial intelligence, mobile applications and computing, communications infrastructure and telecom, cloud technologies and various others.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son added in the statement the SoftBank Vision Fund will be consistent with SoftBank’s strategy of making bold investments in transformative technologies. SoftBank recently made a substantial investment of $1.4 billion in Paytm, it’s the largest funding round by a single investor and in other Indian firms such as Snapdeal and Ola.