View, a startup that makes smart windows with internet-connected frames that can regulate the tinting of the glass, raises $1.1B from SoftBank's Vision Fund
Despite the recent assassination of a journalist by Saudi Arabian agents and an ensuing global controversy, Masayoshi Son … Tweets: @business and @markmilian Tweets: @business : Masayoshi Son and his Saudi-backed SoftBank Vision Fund invests $1.1 billion into a Silicon Valley-based “smart window” firm http://www.bloomberg.com/... Mark Milian / @markmilian : Saudi Arabia's mega tech fund gets back to business, unveiling the first major deal since the murder of a journalist. It's investing over $1 billion in a company that makes internet-connected window glass http://www.bloomberg.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Vision Fund was built on Saudi money from the start — the 2017 settlement between SoftBank and Riyadh created the world's biggest tech fund — so when the Khashoggi murder put that backing under global scrutiny, every subsequent check carried political weight. View's $1.1B round is Masayoshi Son's answer: the first major deal unveiled after the assassination, signaling the fund is back to business.
The signal landed fast. Within days, the Wall Street Journal reported US startups were still lining up for Saudi-backed capital, with View and Zume together raising $1.5B despite the furor, and SoftBank's own Q2 results showed more than half of its $6.2B profit coming from Vision Fund investments — giving Son both the financial case and the cover to keep deploying.
First-order effects
- View gets a $1.1B war chest to scale internet-connected tinting glass at a pace no smart-glass rival can match, while the Vision Fund proves publicly that the Khashoggi controversy has not frozen its dealmaking.
Second-order effects
- Other capital-hungry startups read the deal as proof Saudi money remains available — Zume's raise days later shows the reputational discount founders are willing to accept — and SoftBank's smart-window bet pressures building-materials incumbents to respond to a competitor that can subsidize deployment.
Third-order effects
- If controversy-proof deployment becomes the norm, sovereign-wealth funds harden into the default growth-capital layer for hardware-heavy startups, pushing traditional VCs upstage and making later vehicles like Vision Fund 2 dependent on broadening the LP base beyond Riyadh toward Apple, Microsoft, and other corporates.
The trend: Gulf sovereign capital is becoming the structural funding layer for capital-intensive tech startups, with geopolitical scandal slowing neither deployment nor founder appetite.