The Public Investment Fund (PIF, aka Saudi Arabia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund) continues to invest in video games. He invested $235 million in Korean NCSOFT, thereby becoming its second largest shareholder.
Note that PIF has already invested in NCSOFT before. A month ago, the Saudi fund acquired a 6.69% stake, and now it has increased it to 9.26%.
Up to this point, the second largest shareholder in NCSOFT was another Korean gaming company, Netmarble, which controls 8.9% of the company. However, most of the shares (11.9%) are still concentrated in the hands of CEO Kim Taek-jin.
PIF representatives claim that all the fund’s investments in the publisher Lineage are only of an investment nature.
Recently, PIF has been actively investing in gaming companies. In early February, he spent $1 billion to acquire stakes in Capcom and Nexon. It was assumed that this could be part of the fund’s development strategy — in January, it allocated $ 10 billion to buy shares in companies engaged in e-commerce and renewable resources.