SoftBank is reportedly weighing up an audacious IPO for its $100 billion Vision Fund

Reuters / Kim Kyung Hoon

• SoftBank is considering an IPO for its $100 billion Vision Fund, The Wall Street Journal reports.
• The Journal also reports that SoftBank is courting Oman for investment, having achieved nearly all of its funding from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi.
• A source told the Journal that CEO Masayoshi Son is looking to raise funds in order to seal "informal deals" in China.
• Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.

Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp is considering an IPO of its $100 billion Vision Fund, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The fund was set up in 2017 and has become one of the primary funding vehicles for technology companies around the world. If the IPO came off, it would be "largely unprecedented," the Journal said.

SoftBank is also in talks with Oman for an investment in the fund, which has raised nearly all of its funding so far from Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, according to the report.

Read more: The CEO of SoftBank Investment Advisers, who runs the world’s biggest venture fund, offers an inside look at how he picks which companies to lavish with billions of capital

Oman was not immediately available for a comment requested by Reuters, nor was there an immediate response from the Japanese conglomerate.

SoftBank is seeking to raise new funds for "informal deals" chief executive officer Masayoshi Son negotiated in China for Vision Fund, one of the people told WSJ.

The fund is also planning to double its staff over the next 18 months to keep up with the pace of deal-making by SoftBank, the company’s top deputies reportedly said at a conference in Los Angeles this week.

The company has publicly stated it plans to set up a second investment fund, and according to the WSJ story, is talking to banks about helping it raise some money.

See Also:

• Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos: Here’s how old the founders of 23 tech giants were when they started their first companies
• WeWork confidentially filed to go public
• SoftBank plans to double the size of the business unit managing its massive Vision Fund, going from 400 people up to 800

SEE ALSO: SoftBank is investing $125 million in Google’s solar-powered balloon spinoff Loon

Source: Business Insider –