Softbank-Saudi sovereign fund raise $93 bn for IT investment

Riyadh, May 21 (IANS) Japanese IT and telecom major Softbank Group's funding arm along with Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund have announced the raising of over $93 billion for investing in high technology areas such as artificial intelligence and robotics.

"Softbank Group (SBG) created the SoftBank Vision Fund as a result of its strongly held belief that the next stage of the Information Revolution is underway, 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.

"In addition to SoftBank Group and the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (PIF), as previously announced, investors in the Fund also include the Mubadala Investment Company of the United Arab Emirates (Mubadala), Apple Inc (Apple), FoxConn Technology Group (Foxconn), QualComm Incorporated (Qualcomm) and Sharp Corporation (Sharp)," it said.

"The Fund is targeting a total of $100 billion of committed capital, with a final close within six months," it added.

The announcement was made here on Saturday in the presence of Softbank chairman Masayoshi Son.

Softbank said the Fund will be its primary vehicle to realise its SoftBank 2.0 vision, with preferred access to investments of $100 million or more that meet the Fund's investment strategy.

"The Fund will seek to acquire minority and majority interests in both private and public companies, from emerging technology businesses to established, multi-billion dollar companies requiring substantial growth funding," the statement said.

"The Fund is expected to be active across a wide range of technology sectors, including Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence, robotics, mobile applications and computing, communications infrastructure and telecoms, computational biology and other data-driven business models, cloud technologies and software," it added.

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