Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund has been transforming almost as quickly as the country itself. In 2015, the Public Investment Fund, or PIF as it’s widely known, was a sleepy holding company for government investments that hardly anyone outside the kingdom had heard of. The shift underscores the urgency of its mission: to prepare the world’s biggest crude-exporting nation for a post-oil future. Its biggest holdings are still in local businesses such as Saudi National Bank, Saudi Telecom Co. and national projects like Neom, a $500-billion city-state that would run entirely on renewable power and export green energy. Since 2016, when it committed $45 billion to SoftBank Group Corp.’s technology-focused Vision Fund, PIF’s foreign interests have mushroomed.

Source: Washington Post February 18, 2022 11:28 UTC