En route pour la cagnotte Leetchi.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/19/business/pif-saudi-arabia-fund-problems.html
he kingdom’s vaunted Public Investment Fund, which Saudi Arabia has typically used to fulfill commitments like the one it made this week in Washington, is running low on cash for new investments.
That’s in large part because Prince Mohammed and his deputies have spent a vast portion of the nation’s bounty on projects that are in financial distress, and they are frantically trying to turn things around, according to 11 people briefed on its operations, including current employees, board members, investors and their representatives.
There is Neom, a vast would-be utopian region on the nation’s northern tip that was to feature robot workers, a ski resort and beaches of crushed marble but has instead confronted mountains of delays.
Then there are other, more conventional projects in the ever-expanding PIF portfolio that are nowhere near fruition, such as a coffee chain with one shop so far and dreams of exporting beans to Austria; a cruise line with one ship; and an electric vehicle start-up begun three years ago that has yet to deliver a car.
The kingdom still sits on deep oil wealth. Its ability to pump, however, is heavily constricted by geopolitical agreements to curtail supply and a low price for crude overall. The government is running a growing budget deficit and taking on debt to fulfill Prince Mohammed’s domestic promises.
Behind the scenes, PIF is actively restructuring its operations under the watchful eye of the crown prince, said the people briefed, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential business plans.
The prince has fired the head of at least one of its more imperiled projects, Neom, according to two people briefed on the matter. Meanwhile, the fund is furiously slashing internal financial projections for various investments, including a string of luxury resorts on the Red Sea that sit mostly empty.
Its board is also drawing up plans to act differently in the future by investing in more conventional areas such as publicly traded stocks and bonds, one of the people said. It hopes to double in size to $2 trillion in the next five years, although it’s unclear how much of that would come from investment gains and how much would be new money from the Saudi government.
“As a long-term investor,” Mr. Bakrali said, “our investments will be judged over generations, not quarters, and the returns will be measured both financially and through economic and societal impact.”
In the meantime, PIF’s bigger moves in recent months have been yet more private investments, this time in artificial intelligence companies.
The largest investment by PIF this autumn was a bid for a controlling stake in the world’s largest video game maker, Electronic Arts. PIF’s representatives say it’s a long-term investment that will eventually double in value. People close to the fund point to another motivating factor: Prince Mohammed is an avid gamer.