Recently, the world’s largest private equity fund, backed by Japan’s Softbank Group and Saudi Arabia’s main sovereign wealth fund, said on Saturday it had raised over $93 billion to invest in technology sectors such as artificial intelligence and robotics. This has been reported to be a great development as it will open ways to growth and development.
“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.
Similarly, 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. The plan was captivating as many huge investors started to contribute.
Softbank and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) have been joined by The new fund’s investors to include Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment, which has committed $15 billion, Apple Inc, Qualcomm, Taiwan’s Foxconn Technology and Japan’s Sharp Corp.
Announcement was made by the new fund 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 the country at that time. After meeting with Trump last December, Son pledged $50 billion of investment in the United States that would create 50,000 jobs.
In addition, the new fund may enhance the economy of Saudi Arabia by helping Riyadh obtain access to foreign technology. The Saudi economy has been severely damaged by low oil prices, and policymakers are trying to diversify into new industries.
However, PIF signaled an interest in the tech sector last year by investing about $3.5 billion in U.S. The Saturday’s statement did not say how much the PIF had committed to the fund, but previously it has said it would invest up to $45 billion over five years. Softbank is investing $28 billion.
The new fund had stated that it would seek to buy minority and majority interests in both private and public companies, from emerging businesses to established, multi-billion-dollar firms. It expects to obtain preferred access to long-term investment opportunities worth $100 million or more.
It has been reported that the new fund may also invest in 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.
$100 billion capital to be reached in six months. Investors have said that if the expected capital is raised at the stipulated time, people will benefit from every sector of the economy and life will be made easier to live.
