Klarna CEO Reveals Surprise Stake in Jony Ive’s IO After $6.5B OpenAI Acquisition
5B all-stock acquisition of Jony Ive’s startup IO, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski revealed his firm had quietly invested in the company months earlier, now set to gain OpenAI shares.
- Sebastian Siemiatkowski confirmed his firm, Flat Capital, invested $3.6M in IO six months before its $6.5B acquisition by OpenAI.
- Following Siemiatkowski’s viral tweet, Flat Capital confirmed IO was the unnamed firm in its “mini-portfolio” of U.S. AI investments, generating strong returns in the OpenAI acquisition.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the CEO of Klarna, posted an unexpected comment on X only hours after Sam Altman and Jony Ive revealed on Wednesday that OpenAI was purchasing Ive’s business, IO, in an all-stock deal worth $6.5 billion.
Six months prior, he added, Siemiatkowski’s family investment business, Flat Capital, had purchased shares in IO. Those IO shares will be converted into shares in OpenAI’s for-profit division because this is an all-stock transaction.
The tweet attracted so much attention that his investment firm, when announcing its four investments in a “mini-portfolio” of U.S. AI businesses, made a public statement revealing that IO was the unidentified, mystery company it backed. According to Flat Capital, it spent 34 million SEK (about $3.6 million) on io.
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.
— Sebastian Siemiatkowski (@klarnaseb) May 22, 2025
Even more excited what openAIs push into hardware will look like together with Jony!https://t.co/kOIr58SI8h
Luke Wroblewski, a former Google employee and designer, then sent out another unexpected, since-deleted tweet congratulating the company on the acquisition and saying, “happy to have been investors in this one.”
According to insiders, OpenAI itself was the largest investor in IO, with a 23% stake that was estimated to be worth $1.5 billion. This indicates that OpenAI purchased the remaining shares for roughly $5 billion in stock.
According to Bloomberg, the OpenAI Fund, Thrive Capital, Maverick Ventures, SV Angel, and Laurene Powell Jobs’ company Emerson Collective, were among the other investors in the industry.
Altman stated in a video released by OpenAI on Wednesday that the goal of IO is to develop a line of AI tools that will enable users to create “all sorts of wonderful things” using AI. Ive stated that he is certain that all he has learned over the last 30 years has led him to this moment. Ive claimed that the first AI gadget he is developing has “completely captured” his imagination.
Edited by Harshajit Sarmah
