SoftBank is to acquire more OpenAI shares, after the AI startup allows staff to sell their shares to Japanese tech giant
Current and former staff at OpenAI could be in for a very merry Christmas, after the AI pioneer allowed them to sell some of their shares in a tender offer.
CNBC reported that the ChatGPT owner is allowing former and current staff to sell roughly $1.5 billion worth of shares to Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, which has reportedly been actively seeking to expanded its shareholding in the AI firm.
It comes after OpenAI had closed its mammoth funding round of $6.6 billion in October 2024, that valued the firm at $157 billion.
That latest funding saw significant investments from returning backers including Microsoft, as well as brand new investors such as SoftBank.
Share sale
The tender offer will be open to current and former employees who had been granted restricted stock units at least two years ago and have held the shares for at least that long, one of the people told CNBC.
The unit price of $210 will align with the company’s most recent funding round.
This will allow SoftBank to get an even larger slice of the AI startup and allow current and former OpenAI employees to cash out their shares, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC.
The publication cited its sources as saying that the tender offer for employee shares was carried out through SoftBank’s Vision 2 fund.
Employees will have until 24 December to decide if they want to participate in the new tender offer, which has not previously been reported, one of the people said.
The deal was spurred by SoftBank billionaire founder and CEO Masayoshi Son, who was persistent in asking for a larger stake in the startup after putting $500 million into OpenAI’s last funding round, one of the people told CNBC.
Tech investor
SoftBank was an early investor (and eventual owner) of British chip designer ARM Holdings, and Son reportedly said at a conference in October that he’s saving “tens of billions of dollars” to make the “next big move” in artificial intelligence. He previously invested in Apple, Qualcomm and Alibaba.
The tender offer is not related to OpenAI’s potential plans to restructure the firm to a for-profit benefit corporation, one of the people said.
OpenAI and SoftBank declined to comment, CNBC reported.
OpenAI is facing an increasingly crowded AI sector, including startups such as Amazon-backed Anthropic, Microsoft, Google and Elon Musk’s xAI.
In October, OpenAI launched a search feature within ChatGPT, that positions the AI startup to better compete with search engines such as Google and Microsoft’s Bing, and a few others.