There's a lot of Saudi fear mongering in tech media and it is not undeserved in some ways (MBS is a brutal authoritarian), but I'm not sure what interests people think the Saudis have in tech firms other than getting a return on their investment.

As bad as MBS is, it's not like he has some secret plan to spread Saudi values throughout the world. In fact, he's actually a liberalizing force in SA (economically and socially at least, although not politically). And Saudi Arabia, unlike e.g. China, isn't attempting to remake the world order to revolve around itself (and its authoritarian rulers). So while I understand the sentiment "I don't want to accept money from Saudi Arabia for my start-up because of their human rights violations", I have a hard time understanding why one would fear Saudi Arabian board members would abuse their seats for geopolitical influence purely due to the fact that Saudi Arabia has little to gain in the geopolitics department from tech companies.

Good point, could be both. But the distortion effect is the one that bothers me more, because it doesn't just impact the companies that take Softbank money, but more generally distorts the whole startup space. But sure, could be both.