Even as SoftBank Group Corp frenetically invests in leading tech companies from its $93 billion Vision Fund, the Japanese conglomerate is drawing up plans for a larger second fund, tech news website Recode reported.
SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son wants to raise a new technology investing pool that would complement the massive Vision Fund, Recode said, citing sources it didn’t identify.
The plan is at an early stage. “It’s conceptual, but serious,†the website quoted one of the sources as saying.
The current backers of the Vision Fund, the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and the UAE, are seen as potential investors in the planned fund.
The $93 billion fund’s corpus would become $100 billion should the capital committed by investors come in. But it is already the largest ever tech investment fund in the world.
SoftBank has made multiple investments in leading tech startups across the world from its vision fund. It invested around $2.4 billion in Indian e-commerce market leader Flipkart and $4.4 billion in global co-working startup WeWork among several mega bets recently. It also led a $250-million round in Indian hotel aggregator Oyo.
The vision fund is also reportedly taking part in a $10-billion investment round in ride-hailing firm Uber.
Another Recode report cited Uber board member Arianna Huffington as saying that Uber and SoftBank were likely to reach an agreement within the next week on the pricing of the deal that will pave the way for Japanese investor to acquire as much as one-fifth of the US cab aggregator.
