Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski posted an astonishing message to X after Sam Altman and Jony Ive announced Wednesday that Openai was buying Ive’s company IO in all-stock deals worth $6.5 billion.
Flat Capital, the family investment office at Siemiatkowski, had bought stocks at IO six months ago, he said. As this is a total storage agreement, these IO shares will be converted into shares of Openai’s for-profit stock.
“I was excited that @flatcapital is an investor in IO and will receive more shares at Openai for an investment he made six months ago,” tweeted Siemiatkowski.
This post generated so much interest that his investment company issued an official statement confirming that IO is the mysterious, unnamed company that was supported when it announced four investments in the “miniportfolio” of US AI companies. Flat Capital has revealed that it will spend 34 million sex on IO and convert it to around $3.6 million.
Then came the astonishing tweet from former Googler and designer Luk Urobrewski. He currently works as managing director for Sutter Hill Ventures, a Silicon Valley VC Powerhouse Company.
In a subsequent deleted tweet and a LinkedIn post, Wroblewski wrote:
According to those who saw the now-deleted additional tweets about Sutter’s investment, the company may have been the second-largest investor in IO. However, TechCrunch couldn’t confirm it. Sutter did not respond to a request for comment, so Wroblewski deleted his post after we reached out.
IO’s biggest investor is Openai itself, a 23% stake, sources told Bloomberg, adding that the shares were valued at around $1.5 billion. This means Openai paid about $5 billion in shares for the remaining shares. According to Bloomberg, other IO advocates included Laurene Powell Jobs’ companies Emerson Collective, Thrive Capital, Maverick Ventures, SV Angel and Openai Fund. As previously reported, the fund is not supported by AI model makers and not by external investors. Despite the deleted tweet, Bloomberg confirmed that Sutter Hill Ventures is an investor.