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Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest private players—the so-called unicorn—have managed to put off public listings thanks to a market awash in private capital.

Exhibit A: Uber Technologies, which landed a staggering $3.5 billion from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in 2016. Yasir Al Rumayyan, managing director of the fund, is one of a dozen members on Uber’s board of directors.

But amid growing questions about the kingdom’s role in the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi—Saudi Arabian officials have denied Turkish allegations that Saudi government agents murdered Khashoggi in Istanbul—tech’s private funding strategy is getting a fresh look.

And Silicon Valley now has a full-blown Saudi Arabia problem.

The deep financial ties and chummy relationships illustrate that “the most idealistic companies in American capitalism—especially Silicon Valley in its rhetoric—are more than happy to take the dirtiest money on Earth to be bankrolled,” Anand Giridharadas, author of Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, tells Barron’s. “It is a hollowness when one considers damage down to climate change by Saudi Arabia, and its oppression of women.”

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement that he was “very troubled” by Khashoggi’s disappearance. He’s skipping a major investor conference in Riyadh this month, dubbed “Davos in the Desert.” But he had nothing to say about Uber’s business relationship with Saudi Arabia. Uber did not respond to a request for further comment.

But the debate goes beyond Uber, whose massive Saudi investment helped the company fend off an initial public offering while pushing its private market value to $72 billion.

The Public Investment Fund took an estimated $2 billion stake through secondary markets in Tesla (ticker: TSLA) in August. And in April, the sovereign wealth fund plowed $400 million into augmented reality start-up Magic Leap.

Magic Leap declined to comment, while Tesla did not respond to email messages seeking comment.

Tech’s connection to Saudi Arabia extends deeper, indirectly, through SoftBank of Japan’s $93 billion technology investment fund. The Vision Fund gleans nearly half of its money—$45 billion—from Saudi Arabia, in an attempt by the country to diversify its holding beyond oil. Softbank’s investments include Slack, reportedly in line for a mega-IPO in early 2019; food-delivery service DoorDash; and WeWork, a co-working space company.

“We are the creators of SoftBank Vision Fund. We have 45%,” Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Bloomberg in an interview this month. “Without the PIF [Public Investment Fund], there will be no SoftBank Vision Fund.”

The crown prince said he expected to pump another $45 billion into a new Vision Fund, with the intent of even more investments throughout the tech industry.

Representatives for SoftBank, Slack, and DoorDash did not respond to email messages seeking comment. WeWork declined to comment.

Saudi-based investment firms have directly placed bets on 11 unicorns, according to James Gelfer, a senior strategist at PitchBook. That list includes Uber, Lyft, and Magic Leap, as well as now public Snap (SNAP).

The crown prince is also courting American CEOs and billionaires to help him build a new smart city called Neom. In a statement this week, Sam Altman, head of the influential Y Combinator tech incubator, said he would suspend his work advising the Saudis on Neom.

In a visit to the U.S. last spring, Salman also discussed the project with Amazon.com (AMZN) CEO Jeff Bezos, Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL) co-founder Sergey Brin.

The executives have been quiet on the topic this week. And while big U.S. firms have pulled out of the Davos in the Desert conference, it will be hard for Wall Street and Corporate America to turn away new Saudi money.

“Perhaps there will be some investor boycott of Uber, Lyft, and Slack, which have all taken Saudi money, but unlikely,” Ann Winblad, managing partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, tells Barron’s in an email. “There is still a massive amount of money for companies at a proven growth stage even without new Saudi money.”

Anurag Chandra, managing director at NXT Capital, another venture-capital firm, is more blunt: “I don’t see tech IPOs affected. There is Russian and Chinese money in so many of these deals.”

Corrections & Amplifications: Ann Winblad is managing partner of Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. An earlier version of this article misspelled her last name as Windblad.

Write to Jon Swartz at jonathan.swartz@dowjones.com