Oracle’s Ellison, Apple, Qualcomm invest in SoftBank fund

Oracle founder Larry Ellison will join Apple, Qualcommand Foxconn in backing SoftBank’s record-setting technology fund, allowing the Japanese telecoms group to hit its $100bn goal weeks ahead of schedule.

Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund is also in talks to invest in SoftBank’s Vision Fund, according to people briefed about the negotiations. These people added that the fund will remain open to additional investment until the end of January as demand from both large companies and sovereign funds remained strong.

The ease with which SoftBank has been able to attract investors, highlights the huge appetite global companies have for tech assets despite fears that the sky-high valuations of tech start-ups such as Uber and Snapchat are driving a new bubble.

SoftBank has set up an investment committee that met for the first time on Tuesday, as the Japanese company begins exploring potential deals, the people said.

Masayoshi Son, the deal-hungry billionaire who built SoftBank into a global internet powerhouse, announced the launch of the fund in October after securing the support of Saudi Arabia’s deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. He agreed to invest up to $45bn via the Kingdom’s Public Investment Fund.

Since Donald Trump won the US election in November, Mr Son has been actively courting the president-elect, by vowing to invest as much as $50bn in American start-ups. Analysts believe the move could help SoftBank expand its other US businesses. SoftBank owns a controlling stake in telecoms group Sprint.

The Vision Fund will be headed by Rajeev Misra, a former debt-trader at Deutsche Bank and UBS. He joined SoftBank at the end of 2014 as head of strategic finance.

The main focus of the fund will be cutting-edge tech companies focusing on artificial intelligence and robotics as well as the “internet of things”, said two people informed about the investment strategy.

Apple confirmed it is planning to invest $1bn in SoftBank’s vision fund, an unusual move for the company which has historically avoided large deals and has not run its own venture capital arm like many other large tech companies such as Google and Intel. Recently, it has slowly begun to invest more, with its $3bn purchase of headphones maker Beats in 2014 and its $1bn investment in Chinese ride-sharing service Didi Kuaidi last year.

“We’ve worked closely with SoftBank for many years and we believe their new fund will speed the development of technologies which may be strategically important to Apple,” a spokesman said.

Apple is looking for ways to use its cash pile of about $240bn to spread its bets across new technologies, as investors wait for it to develop a product as successful as the iPhone.

Late last month, SoftBank invested $1bn in OneWeb, a US satellite start-up, and cited it as the kind of investment it planned to carry out through the fund. In July, SoftBank spent $32bn to acquire Arm Holdings, a British company that designs chips used by smartphones and other connected devices.

SoftBank confirmed that Mr Ellison’s family office, Qualcomm and Foxconn planned to invest in the fund. The individual companies and the Abu Dhabi sovereign fund were not immediately reachable.