Press. voanews.com
The world's
largest private equity fund, backed by Japan's Softbank Group and Saudi
Arabia's main sovereign wealth fund, said Saturday that it had raised over $93
billion to invest in technology sectors such as artificial intelligence and
robotics. "The next stage of the Information Revolution is under way, and
building the businesses that will make this possible will require unprecedented
large-scale, long-term investment," the Softbank Vision Fund said in a
statement.
Japanese
billionaire Masayoshi Son, chairman of Softbank, a telecommunications and tech
investment group, revealed plans for the fund last October, and since then it
has obtained commitments from some of the world's most deep-pocketed investors.
In addition to Softbank and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the new
fund's investors include Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment, which has committed
$15 billion, Apple Inc., Qualcomm, Taiwan's Foxconn Technology and Japan's
Sharp Corp.
The new fund
made its announcement during the visit of President Donald Trump to Riyadh and
the signing of tens of billions of dollars' worth of business deals between
U.S. and Saudi companies. Son was also in Riyadh on Saturday. After meeting
with Trump last December, Son pledged $50 billion of investment in the United
States that would create 50,000 jobs, a promise Trump claimed was a direct
result of his election win.
The fund may
also serve the interests of Saudi Arabia by helping Riyadh obtain access to
foreign technology. Low oil prices have severely damaged the Saudi economy, and
policymakers are trying to diversify into new industries. The PIF signaled an interest in the tech
sector last year by investing $3.5 billion in U.S. ride-hailing firm Uber.
Saturday's
statement did not say how much the PIF had committed to the fund, but
previously it had said it would invest up to $45 billion over five years.
Softbank is investing $28 billion. The new fund said it would seek to buy
minority and majority interests in both private and public companies, from
emerging businesses to established, multibillion-dollar firms. It expects to
obtain preferred access to long-term investment opportunities worth $100
million or more.
Other sectors in
which the fund may invest include mobile computing, communications
infrastructure, computational biology, consumer internet businesses and
financial technology. The fund aims for $100 billion of committed capital and
expects to complete its money-raising in six months, it added.