Klarna CEO and Sutter Hill Take Victory Lap After Jony Ive’s OpenAI Deal

Just hours after Sam Altman and Jony Ive revealed that OpenAI was acquiring Ive’s company, io, in an all-stock transaction valued at $6.5 billion, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski shared a surprising message on X.

Siemiatkowski disclosed that his family investment office, Flat Capital, had purchased shares in io six months prior. As this is an all-stock deal, those io shares will now be converted into shares in the for-profit arm of OpenAI.

“Excited that @FlatCapital was an investor in io and that we will now receive even more shares in OpenAI at a hefty return for an investment we did some 6 months ago,” Siemiatkowski posted on X.

The post garnered significant attention, prompting his investment firm to issue a public statement confirming that io was the unnamed company it backed when it announced its four investments in a “mini-portfolio” of U.S. AI companies. Flat Capital revealed they invested 34 million SEK in io, approximately $3.6 million USD.

Adding to the excitement, former Googler and designer Luke Wroblewski, now a managing director at Sutter Hill Ventures, also took to social media.

In a now-deleted tweet and LinkedIn post, Wroblewski stated, “congrats to io on the $6.5B acquisition by OpenAI today. happy to have been investors in this one.”

According to reports from those who saw additional now-deleted tweets about Sutter’s investment, the firm may have been the second largest investor in io. TechCrunch was unable to independently verify this information. Sutter Hill Ventures did not respond to requests for comment, and Wroblewski removed his posts after being contacted.

Bloomberg reported that OpenAI itself was the largest investor in io, holding a 23% stake valued at around $1.5 billion. This implies OpenAI paid approximately $5 billion in stock for the remaining shares. Other investors in io included Laurene Powell Jobs’ firm Emerson Collective, Thrive Capital, Maverick Ventures, SV Angel, and the OpenAI Fund. The OpenAI Fund is backed by outside investors, not OpenAI’s own capital. Bloomberg also corroborated that Sutter Hill Ventures was an investor, despite the deleted tweets.