A group led by Japanese technology conglomerate Softbank Group Corp has acquired a major stake in Uber Technologies Inc, potentially tamping down internal warfare at the troubled ride-hailing company and strengthening the hand of CEO Dara Khosrowshahi as he seeks to move it past the firestorm that has consumed it for the past year.
In a tender offer that expired on Thursday afternoon, Softbank acquired a 15 percent stake in Uber while the remaining members got about 3 percent, according to a person familiar with the situation, who was not authorized to publicly discuss details.
Under the deal, the Softbank group is also to buy about US$1 billion worth of new Uber stock.
Softbank said it expects to close the overall investment next month.
Uber has been plagued by a growing string of scandals over the past year, including allegations of sexual misconduct and charges that it deployed an espionage team to plunder trade secrets from its rivals.
The company is also facing off with regulators in London over its right to operate there, dealing with the fallout from a major hack of driver and passenger information that it paid a hefty ransom to conceal and battling Google spinoff Waymo in a lawsuit accusing it of trade-secret theft.
Uber denies engaging in trade-secret theft.
The Softbank deal clears the way for Uber to sell stock to the public. Under the deal, a possible initial public offering could take place before the end of 2019.
Last month, Benchmark Capital Group LLC, Menlo Ventures and other early Uber investors had confirmed their intent to sell shares in the company.
It also curtails the influence of former CEO Travis Kalanick, an Uber cofounder, who was pushed out in June, but retained control of three out of Uber’s 11 board seats.
Benchmark, in fact, sued the former CEO in August, accusing him of trying to pack the board with his allies and plotting to return as CEO.
As part of the Softbank deal, Kalanick agreed to allow a majority of board members to vote on any future appointments that he makes. Benchmark agreed to suspend its lawsuit against Kalanick and to drop it after the end of the tender offer period.
“We have tremendous confidence in Uber’s leadership and employees, and are excited to support Uber as it continues to reinvent how people and goods are transported around the world,” Softbank CEO Rajeev Misra said in a statement.
Uber said in a statement that the overall transaction would “support our technology investments, fuel our growth and strengthen our corporate governance.”
Uber had been valued at US$68.5 billion in a previous stock sale.
The Wall Street Journal said the tender offer valued Uber at US$48 billion, a 30 percent discount.
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
TARIFF TRADE-OFF: Machinery exports to China dropped after Beijing ended its tariff reductions in June, while potential new tariffs fueled ‘front-loaded’ orders to the US The nation’s machinery exports to the US amounted to US$7.19 billion last year, surpassing the US$6.86 billion to China to become the largest export destination for the local machinery industry, the Taiwan Association of Machinery Industry (TAMI, 台灣機械公會) said in a report on Jan. 10. It came as some manufacturers brought forward or “front-loaded” US-bound shipments as required by customers ahead of potential tariffs imposed by the new US administration, the association said. During his campaign, US president-elect Donald Trump threatened tariffs of as high as 60 percent on Chinese goods and 10 percent to 20 percent on imports from other countries.
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
RSS