Japan-based telecommunications and internet group SoftBank is seeking $10bn in capital that will be allocated to supporting its Vision Fund, Bloomberg reported yesterday, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
The corporate is in discussions with external investors to secure $5bn which it will match with capital from its own funds. Several of Vision Fund’s existing backers are Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds affected by the dropping price of oil at present.
SoftBank is in the process of raising capital for the second Vision Fund, which is following a $98.6bn first iteration. It had committed just over $80.5bn of that capital by December 2019 according to a regulatory filing cited by Bloomberg, part of which will pay back a coupon to one of its backers.
Earlier reports suggested the second fund had downgraded its targeted close to about $50bn, and SoftBank has been injecting capital itself while pursuing limited partners.
The extra cash will go to portfolio companies dealing with the ongoing fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, which has affected large swathes of the service and manufacturing industries, and to potentially snap up competitors at bargain prices.
Vision Fund’s largest investments include commitments to co-working space network WeWork, short-term accommodation provider Oyo and ride hailing services Uber, Didi Chuxing, Grab and Ola, all of which have consumer-facing business models vulnerable to the disease.
Several other Vision Fund portfolio companies have recently faced financial issues or conducted rounds of redundancies, including Brandless, OneWeb, Fair, Zume and Wag, in addition to Oyo.
