The Scoop
Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund is set to meet some of Wall Street’s biggest firms in New York this week as it seeks foreign backing for its spending plans amid cash constraints at home.
Public Investment Fund’s senior management — along with representatives of some of its biggest companies including AI firm HUMAIN, Riyadh’s King Abdullah Financial District, and luxury hotel developer Red Sea Global — will be in New York later this week, according to people familiar with the matter. They are expected to meet with investors including Apollo, Blackstone, Brookfield, Carlyle, KKR, and Stonepeak, as well as the US Export-Import Bank.
The Saudi delegation is not fundraising for a specific project from the event, which is being arranged by US investment bank Lazard. The meetings are intended to familiarize investors with PIF and its portfolio, laying the groundwork for future debt or equity fundraising from global investors, the people said.
PIF is ramping up efforts to attract foreign investors as it looks to reduce its reliance on direct funding and bring greater external scrutiny of its plans. The nearly $1 trillion fund, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, has spent hundreds of billions of dollars over the past decade creating companies and developing real estate projects.
That spending was supposed to catalyze foreign investment into the kingdom, but so far the results have been short of Saudi expectations: the country attracted $32.6 billion in net inflows last year, still far from its target of $100 billion in FDI by 2030.
Lazard declined to comment. PIF didn’t respond to requests for comment.
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PIF’s latest five-year plan, unveiled earlier this year, emphasizes spending discipline, value realization from its portfolio, and attracting third-party capital. It said its 2026-2030 plan will be “underpinned by increasingly diversified financial returns, greater private sector and capital markets participation in Saudi Arabia, and continued operational and institutional excellence.”
Reducing PIF subsidiaries’ dependence on state finances has long been part of the fund’s strategy. Weaning units off of state coffers has become more urgent given the slow uptick of FDI and runaway spending or over ambitious plans at several PIF companies. Some of PIF’s most high-profile bets have been dramatically scaled back as a result.
PIF pulled funding for the new golf tournament LIV Golf after it poured around $5 billion into the venture with no return. NEOM, the vast real estate project on the kingdom’s west coast, has also been sharply scaled back after spending $64 billion with little to show for it.
Other investments have made more progress. HUMAIN has signed partnerships with several US tech firms and says it is already attracting external financing for its data centers, while Red Sea Global has opened several luxury tourist resorts on the kingdom’s west coast and plans to expand to other markets.
Notable
- PIF is preparing to make a more aggressive push to sell mature assets, pursue listings and divestments, and finance more of its operations and investments with external capital, Bloomberg reported in August.