DUBAI- The Public Investment Fund, Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, will raise money through debt twice this year including foreign currency borrowings, its managing director told CNBC.

"I think it's going to be in the neighbourhood of 14 billion Saudi riyals ($3.73 billion) and for the U.S. dollar I think it's going to be north of $8 or $10 billion," Yasir al-Rumayyan said in an interview at a conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Last year the fund raised an $11 billion international syndicated loan, its first commercial borrowing, and sources told Reuters this month it has been in talks with banks to raise a short-term bridge loan for as much as $8 billion to use for new investments. Recently a fund executive said he the PIF is no hurry to issue a bond. 

He said PIF has $300 billion in assets, which has doubled from 2015. The fund employs 500 people.

Rumayyan said it had allocated $45 billion into the $100 billion Softbank Vision Fund, which focuses on technology companies. The Softbank Vision Fund has already deployed 80 to 85 percent of the amount, he said.

PIF has made substantial commitments to renewables and recycling, and to technology companies, such as the money invested in a technology fund led by Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp. It also owns stakes in electric car makers Tesla and Lucid Motors.

"If you look at our international investment, it’s like a bridge to Saudi Arabia," Rumayyan said.

"The companies that we have in Softbank Vision Fund, like 80 of them, we started signing MOUs and JVs with some of these companies."

($1 = 3.7501 riyals)

(Reporting by Saeed Azhar; Editing by Alison Williams) ((Saeed.Azhar@thomsonreuters.com; +971 44536787; Reuters Messaging: saeed.azhar.reuters.com@reuters.net))