NEW YORK • SoftBank Group has quietly completed an initial money-raising push for its second technology fund, at a fraction of its targeted US$108 billion (S$146.9 billion).

The Japanese company has raised roughly US$2 billion for the second Vision Fund so it can start backing start-ups, according to two people familiar with the matter.

This stage of the fund-raising process is known as a first close, and SoftBank will continue gathering commitments.

SoftBank said in July that its second Vision Fund would be even larger than the first, which broke records in 2017 by raising almost US$100 billion. This time around, SoftBank has said it is taking more control, committing US$38 billion of its own capital and replacing Saudi Arabia, which was the largest investor in the first fund.

So far, it is unclear whether there are any outside investors in the second fund. The original Vision Fund was announced in October 2016, but took another seven months for its first major closing with US$93 billion in commitments.

Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund and Abu Dhabi's Mubadala Investment Co, which contributed US$45 billion and US$15 billion, respectively, to the first fund, are reconsidering how much to put into the new fund, Bloomberg News previously reported.

SoftBank has said the second fund is also expected to collect money from Apple, Microsoft, Foxconn Technology and the sovereign wealth fund of Kazakhstan.

WeWork and Uber Technologies, two of the largest investments made by SoftBank and the first Vision Fund, have performed poorly this year. The fair value of the fund's stakes in transportation and logistics companies was US$31.1 billion as of Sept 30, just below the cost of those investments. The fair value of its real estate investments was US$7.5 billion, below the US$9 billion cost.

BLOOMBERG