Employees have until December 24 to decide whether to participate in the newly disclosed tender offer. The deal was reportedly driven by SoftBank’s billionaire founder and CEO Masayoshi Son, who pressed for a larger stake in the startup after putting $500 million into OpenAI’s last funding round.
Son is currently in India, and met Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani on Tuesday.
He is meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday.
What’s behind the move?
The development highlights Son’s interest in the AI sector and his focus on backing the most valuable private players in the space. SoftBank was an early backer of Arm, and Son recently stated at a conference that he is reserving “tens of billions of dollars” for what he calls the “next big move” in artificial intelligence.
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The investment in OpenAI reflects SoftBank’s aggressive strategy to deploy capital, particularly into businesses with high cash requirements, according to a source familiar with Son’s plans.
Earlier, Clavel told ET that SoftBank will plough $500 million into Sam Altman’s OpenAI, valuing the maker of ChatGPT at $150 billion.
OpenAI employees can cash out
The tender offer will allow current and former OpenAI employees to cash out their shares, provided they were granted restricted stock units at least two years ago and have held them for that duration. Shares will be priced at $210 per unit, aligning with the company’s latest funding round.
Competitive landscape
The generative AI market is predicted to surpass $1 trillion in revenue over the next decade. Rivals like Anthropic and Google are ramping up efforts, while Microsoft integrates OpenAI’s tools into its own ecosystem.
In response, OpenAI recently launched a search engine feature in ChatGPT, positioning it to challenge traditional search engines like Google and Bing.
SoftBank’s India portfolio
SoftBank portfolio firms FirstCry, Ola Electric, Swiggy, and Unicommerce have gone public this year. Son’s prior investments include major names like Qualcomm, Apple, and Alibaba. Beyond these big firms, SoftBank has also made an uncharacteristically small investment in the wearable startup Ultrahuman. The multinational investment holding company holds a portfolio of about 470 companies, managing $160 billion in assets across its two vision funds.
