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$1.5B OpenAI Tender Offer & $20M Raised
Xan Wood
December 02, 2024
Welcome to Built By Berkeley, where we announce all the funding rounds by Berkeley-founded companies. This is a community effort, so please let us know if we missed a company here. 🐻
Masa, the founder of SoftBank, strikes again! Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group will make a $1.5B tender offer for OpenAI shares after recently investing $500M in the company. Masa, a proud Berkeley Bear and reader of Built By Berkeley 😃, is one of the most fascinating business figures in the world, with a wild career full of ups and downs.
He has tried to invest in or acquire Nvidia three times, including a blocked deal to merge Arm and Nvidia in 2022. There’s a funny recent introduction by Jensen Huang here, along with a full interview linked here. At one point, Masa was the richest man in the world, but the dot-com crash saw his net worth plummet from $78 billion to $1 billion…don’t worry too much he is back to $30B+.
In 1999, Masa and SoftBank made a $20M investment in Alibaba. Their 30% ownership stake eventually grew to be worth $130 billion at its peak—a massive 6,500x return and one of the best venture investments of all time.
He faced heavy criticism for the $100 billion Vision Fund, raised in 2017 (still the largest venture capital fund ever assembled in one go), especially for some of its more audacious investments, such as the $16B invested into WeWork.
These highlights barely scratch the surface of Masa’s story. He has consistently been ahead of the curve in identifying emerging technology trends.
Imagine the stories he could tell!
For those interested in learning more about his journey, some fascinating reads include Gambling Man: The Secret Story of the World's Greatest Disruptor, Masayoshi Son, and The Money Trap: Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble, and Aiming High: Masayoshi Son, SoftBank, and Disrupting Silicon Valley.
Summary by the #️⃣ & 💰:
1 Berkeley-founded companies funded
$20M of capital raised from the 25th November to 30th November
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Acquired
💸 Atlantic Money. Acquisition 🇬🇧 Money transfer app. 💰 Deel
🐻 Neeraj Baid, Co-Founder & CEO BS. EECS. Article.
Tender Offer
🐻 John Schulman, Co-Founder. PhD EECS. Article.
Closed Rounds
❤️ Secretome Therapeutics. $20.4M Round 🇺🇸 Cell-based therapy. 💰 Huffines Enterprises Science & Technology
🐻 Vinny Jindal, Co-Founder & CEO. MA Endocrinology Article.
Built By Berkeley Tracker
Date Built By Berkeley Started | Companies Funded | Total Raised ($M) |
7/8/24 | 194 | 14,841 |
Our goal is to document the startup ecosystem of Berkeley-founded companies. Please share this newsletter with any Cal Bears in your network so we can crowdsource information about all investment rounds and job opportunities.
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