The March 18th release of the quarterly report from the Vision Fund, a joint venture between Softbank and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, reveals some interesting insights into their investments over the past quarter. It is important to understand these reports in order to better comprehend where they are investing their money and what that means for investors. Let’s dive into this report and take a look at some of the key points.
What is the Vision Fund?
The Vision Fund was created in 2017 by Softbank and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in order to invest in technology companies. With $100 billion of capital, it has been making headlines ever since its formation for its investments in some of the most successful startups around the world. This fund has invested in companies like Uber, WeWork, Guardant Health, and Slack.
What Did We Learn From The Report?
The report revealed that during this quarter alone, the Vision fund had invested $18 billion across 50 companies globally. This amount brings their total invested funds up to $98 billion with only two billion left in reserves. Furthermore, this quarter saw a significant increase in investment activity compared to previous quarters with 32 new investments being made compared to eight last quarter and 11 investments being exited this quarter compared to six last quarter. The majority of these investments were still made within Asia but there were also notable commitments made outside of Asia including Japan-based messaging service Line’s $1 billion investment round as well as an undisclosed investment into US-based real estate company Opendoor Technologies Inc.
Conclusion:
This quarterly report from the Vision Fund is extremely telling about where Softbank and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund are directing their investments and what types of tech companies they are interested in funding or exiting out of. While there has been a large focus on Asian markets such as China and India we can see from this report that they are beginning to make larger commitments into other markets such as Japan and the US which may signal bigger things for those tech markets going forward. All-in-all, it will be interesting to see how future quarters pan out for this fund as they continue making strategic investments across global markets.
