SoftBank has reportedly sold $2.3 trillion worth of Coupang shares this year.
According to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on the 25th, SoftBank sold 20 million shares of Coupang for $576.8 million (approximately 800.6 billion won) on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on the 20th of this month (local time).
On May 8th, it sold 30 million shares for $798 million (approximately 1.1 trillion won), and on June 13th, it sold 10 million shares for $283.1 million (approximately 392.9 billion won).
The total number of Coupang shares sold in three transactions this year is 60 million, amounting to $1.6579 billion (approximately 2.3 trillion won). As a result, SoftBank's equity stake in Coupang has decreased from 32.4% on Dec. 31, 2021, to the current 17.39%.
The potential reason for the sales is to secure funds during the process of transitioning its investment portfolio. In February, SoftBank announced its participation in a $500 billion (approximately 710 trillion won) artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure project called 'Stargate' in collaboration with OpenAI and formalized an additional investment of up to $40 billion (approximately 57 trillion won) in OpenAI. Recently, it invested $2 billion (approximately 2.7766 trillion won) in Intel to acquire a 2% equity stake.