Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman through the Public Investment Fund (PIF) has invested in various places, the most recent of which is Newcastle United. But previously, there were many technology and game companies that also got the investment from the Arab Prince.
At least USD 3 billion has been disbursed by PIF to three US game companies during Q4 2020. The companies are Activison Blizzard, Electronic Arts, and Take-Two Interactive Software.
The gaming industry itself has attracted the interest of Prince Salman, who claims to be the first generation in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia to play video games.
He also once admitted that one of his favorite games is Call of Duty, the best-selling game series from Activision,
A total of 14.9 million Activision shares were bought by PIF, which was valued at almost USD 1.4 billion in Q4 2020. Then PIF also bought up 7.4 million EA shares and 3.0 million Take-Two shares, which were valued at approximately USD 1.1 billion and USD 826 million at the end of December.
Not only through PIF, Prince Salman's coffers of wealth have also appeared in SNK Corp, the developer of the popular game King of Fighters and Samurai Shodown through the Mohamed bin Salman Foundation - also known as the MiSK Foundation, his charitable organization.
Prince Salman owns a third of SNK's shares through the MiSK Foundation, and plans to increase its ownership to 51%.
Just that? Certainly not. Prince Salman also used SoftBank's Vision Fund to invest. Some say that PIF has a strong influence on the Vision Fund.
The Vision Fund itself has funded several Silicon Valley companies, including companies such as Slack, WeWork, DoorDash, to Nvidia. two Silicon Valley startups, View and Zoom, have also announced they are getting funding from the Vision Fund.
