Taxi-booking app company Grab is set to receive another investment from Japan-based SoftBank totalling about $500 million, as part of a $1 billion funding round, Reuters reported.

The companies are finalising terms of the funding round which should close in a few weeks, the news agency said. Grab stepped up its expansion after acquiring Uber’s Southeast Asia operations in March, with the US-based company taking a 27.5 per cent stake.

Grab operates in eight countries in the region and has raised more than $6 billion in total investment. It was valued at about $11 billion after its latest funding round in June, when Toyota Motor injected $1 billion as the lead investor, Reuters said.

In July 2017, Grab said it raised $2 billion from Japan-based SoftBank and China’s largest taxi-booking app company Didi Chuxing. SoftBank made its first investment in Grab in 2014.

Vision Fund
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s sovereign fund plans to invest $45 billion into a second SoftBank Vision Fund, Bloomberg reported.

Mohammed Bin Salman, chairman of the Public Investment Fund (PIF) and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, told the news agency the fund wants to be a key investor in any future SoftBank fund. The comments come around a week after Bloomberg reported SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son as stating he plans to raise $100 billion every two-to-three years to fuel its investment programme.

PIF invested $45 billion into the current Vision Fund.