Public Investment Fund

The Public Investment Fund (PIF; Arabic: صندوق الاستثمارات العامة) is the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia. It is among the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world with total estimated assets of US$941 billion. It was created in 1971 for the purpose of investing funds on behalf of the government of Saudi Arabia. The wealth fund has Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler since 2015, as its chairman.

More than 60% of the fund's activities are within Saudi Arabia. Within Saudi Arabia, the fund's investments primarily go to private conglomerates owned by prominent Saudi business families who have close ties to the Saudi ruling family. Outside Saudi Arabia the fund's investments into prominent foreign assets such as Premier League football club Newcastle United have generated controversy due to the fund's lack of transparency and close control by the Saudi government, which has itself faced significant criticism around the lack of human rights in the country.

The Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) was established by King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in 1971 by Royal Decree M/24 with the stated intent to provide financing support for projects of strategic significance to the national economy. For much of its history, the PIF was a passive entity that oversaw the Saudi state's equity in listed firms. When neighboring petrostates began using their sovereign wealth funds for influence, Saudi Arabia followed them. The PIF expanded its staff from 50 in 2015 to nearly 500 in 2018.

In July 2014, the Council of Ministers granted the PIF authority to fund new companies inside and outside the Kingdom, independently or in cooperation with the public and private sectors, without the council's prior approval. In March 2015, oversight of PIF was moved from the Ministry of Finance to the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (CEDA). As part of this process, a new PIF was appointed, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The board says PIF is aligned with the government's Vision 2030 with the aim to diversify the economy. To bolster the resources of the PIF and help in the financing of investments into foreign companies such as Uber and Tesla, the PIF received cash from the Saudi Central Bank, issued debt, and benefitted from the proceeds of the privatisation of Saudi state assets.

In 2022, a 4% stake in ownership of Saudi Aramco was transferred to the PIF, which was repeated in 2023 as part of the fund's plan to increase assets under management to over $1 trillion by 2025. The shares for the second 4% stake in 2023 were valued at around $78 billion. The move was intended to take advantage of higher hydrocarbon prices to fund the expansion of the PIF in its overarching goal to diversify investments.

A 2021 report by Global SWF found that PIF's Governance, Sustainability, and Resilience (GSR) score had risen by 12% to an overall score of 40% (out of 100%) that year. This was partially attributed to the fact that PIF had started to build a dedicated ESG (Environmental, Social, and Sustainability) team. The fund achieved an annual return of around 8% between 2018 and 2022.

PIF has a 38% stake in Posco Engineering & Construction Co., a 5% stake in Uber (for $3.5 billion), and a 5% stake in the video game companies Capcom and Nexon (for $1 billion). In March 2016, it was announced that ownership of Saudi Aramco would be transferred to the PIF and that the Kingdom will seek to list 5 percent of Aramco's shares by 2017. PIF owns Qiddiya, spearheads the Red Sea Project for luxury beach resorts, and owns the closed joint-stock company Neom. PIF owns a 5.7% stake (valued at $500 million) in concert distributor Live Nation. In 2020, PIF purchased minority stakes in major U.S. companies Boeing, Meta Platforms (then Facebook), and Citigroup. PIF disclosed a $713.7 million stake in Boeing, around $522 million in Citigroup, a $522 million stake in Facebook, a $495.8 million stake in The Walt Disney Company, and a $487.6 million stake in Bank of America. It also disclosed a small stake in Berkshire Hathaway and a $827.7 million stake in oil company BP. In 2020, PIF purchased a 2.32% stake (valued at $1.5 billion) in India's Jio Platforms, and reduced its holdings in US stocks to $7 billion from $10.1 billion in the third quarter, leaving its then $2.7 billion stake in Uber as its largest US holding.

In 2016, SoftBank Group and the PIF announced that they would establish the SoftBank Vision Fund, which aimed to invest up to $45 billion over five years in the tech sector. The SoftBank Group confirmed that during the fiscal year 2019–2020, the Vision Fund incurred a loss calculated at $17.7 billion after the value of investments was written down. The losses were related to the investments in WeWork and Uber. In the 39-year history of SoftBank, the Saudi Arabia-backed funds paid the group its worst-ever losses; the overall company losses were 1.36 trillion yen (more than $12.5 billion).