Japanese conglomerate Softbank Group Corp plans to seek approval of its WeWork bailout package with a US government committee that reviews corporate deals for national security risks.
Softbank is to file in the coming weeks with the US Committee on Foreign Investment in the US, (CFIUS), said a person familiar with the plans, who asked not to be identified discussing private information.
The board of WeWork parent We Co on Tuesday reached an agreement with Softbank to effectively take over 80 percent of the company, in a deal that included an offer to buy US$3 billion of the existing shares.
The move was part of an effort to shore up the finances of New York-based WeWork, which was on track to run out of money as soon as next month.
Tokyo-based Softbank has run into issues with CFIUS in the past and the review could be a significant hurdle to closing the deal.
CFIUS reviews investments by foreign firms in US companies. The committee can impose conditions on a deal or recommend to the US president that a transaction be blocked.
Softbank and WeWork representatives declined to comment.
Softbank won approval from the panel to buy Sprint Corp and British chip designer ARM Holdings PLC, but the committee put conditions on its ownership of Sprint and restricted its control of alternative-asset manager Fortress Investment Group.
SoftBank was unable to fill two seats on the board of one of its portfolio companies, Uber Technologies Inc, because it did not have CFIUS approval, Bloomberg reported earlier this year.
More than a year after Softbank made a large investment in Uber, the company went public, voiding some of its prior commitments with Softbank. The company never got to fill its seats.
CFIUS became more powerful last year after the US Congress passed legislation giving it broader authority to scrutinize and potentially halt foreign deals for reasons of national security.
It has been primarily concerned about investments in US technology companies, particularly by Chinese buyers, but it also scrutinizes real-estate transactions that are close to sensitive military and government facilities.
The panel played a role in the White House’s decision last year to block the merger of San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc and Broadcom Ltd, then based in Singapore, in what would have been the largest-ever technology deal.
CFIUS also told the Chinese owner of California-based dating app Grindr that its ownership of the app was a national security concern.
The company in May said that it had reached an agreement with US officials to sell Grindr by June next year.
In a statement on Tuesday announcing the WeWork bailout deal, Softbank said that it “will not hold a majority of voting rights at any general stockholder meeting or board of directors meeting” of WeWork, and that Softbank “does not control the company.”
CHIP RACE: Three years of overbroad export controls drove foreign competitors to pursue their own AI chips, and ‘cost US taxpayers billions of dollars,’ Nvidia said China has figured out the US strategy for allowing it to buy Nvidia Corp’s H200s and is rejecting the artificial intelligence (AI) chip in favor of domestically developed semiconductors, White House AI adviser David Sacks said, citing news reports. US President Donald Trump on Monday said that he would allow shipments of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China, part of an administration effort backed by Sacks to challenge Chinese tech champions such as Huawei Technologies Co (華為) by bringing US competition to their home market. On Friday, Sacks signaled that he was uncertain about whether that approach would work. “They’re rejecting our chips,” Sacks
NATIONAL SECURITY: Intel’s testing of ACM tools despite US government control ‘highlights egregious gaps in US technology protection policies,’ a former official said Chipmaker Intel Corp has tested chipmaking tools this year from a toolmaker with deep roots in China and two overseas units that were targeted by US sanctions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter. Intel, which fended off calls for its CEO’s resignation from US President Donald Trump in August over his alleged ties to China, got the tools from ACM Research Inc, a Fremont, California-based producer of chipmaking equipment. Two of ACM’s units, based in Shanghai and South Korea, were among a number of firms barred last year from receiving US technology over claims they have
It is challenging to build infrastructure in much of Europe. Constrained budgets and polarized politics tend to undermine long-term projects, forcing officials to react to emergencies rather than plan for the future. Not in Austria. Today, the country is to officially open its Koralmbahn tunnel, the 5.9 billion euro (US$6.9 billion) centerpiece of a groundbreaking new railway that will eventually run from Poland’s Baltic coast to the Adriatic Sea, transforming travel within Austria and positioning the Alpine nation at the forefront of logistics in Europe. “It is Austria’s biggest socio-economic experiment in over a century,” said Eric Kirschner, an economist at Graz-based Joanneum
BUBBLE? Only a handful of companies are seeing rapid revenue growth and higher valuations, and it is not enough to call the AI trend a transformation, an analyst said Artificial intelligence (AI) is entering a more challenging phase next year as companies move beyond experimentation and begin demanding clear financial returns from a technology that has delivered big gains to only a small group of early adopters, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Taiwan said yesterday. Most organizations have been able to justify AI investments through cost recovery or modest efficiency gains, but few have achieved meaningful revenue growth or long-term competitive advantage, the consultancy said in its 2026 AI Business Predictions report. This growing performance gap is forcing executives to reconsider how AI is deployed across their organizations, it said. “Many companies
RSS