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The SoftBank Corp. logo displayed on a glass door of the company’s store in Tokyo, Japan, on Wednesday, May 8, 2024. SoftBank Group Corp. is scheduled to announce its earnings figures on May 13. Photographer: Toru Hanai/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Toru Hanai | Bloomberg | Getty Images

SoftBank Group shares rose as much as 6.3% on Wednesday, after a report said that Elliott Management had rebuilt a substantial stake in the Japanese technology conglomerate and was pushing for stock repurchases.

Elliott is lobbying for $15 billion worth of share buybacks, arguing that the buybacks will boost SoftBank’s share price and “act as a sign of Son’s confidence in his strategy,” the Financial Times reported.

SoftBank shares hit a high of 9,572 yen on Wednesday, 6.32% higher than its Tuesday closing price, according to LSEG data. The shares closed 4.6% higher at 9,420 yen on Wednesday.

Elliott’s stake was valued at more than $2 billion and the U.S. fund manager had been liaising with SoftBank’s senior management in the last two to three months, the report said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Founded by Masayoshi Son, SoftBank has been investing into artificial intelligence segment since declaring last year that the company was going into “offence mode” after building a huge cash pile of over $35 billion during its “defense mode.”

SoftBank is betting big on U.K. chip designer Arm, which went public last year. Arm is reportedly planning to launch AI chips by 2025 to capture explosive demand.

The report further said that Elliott was targeting SoftBank for the second time, focusing on the wide gap between the combined value of the company’s assets and its market valuation.

Elliott had invested $2.5 billion in SoftBank in 2020 and sought share buybacks worth $20 billion along with governance changes, Financial Times reported that year.

Elliott Management did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. SoftBank Group declined to comment.

Read the full report on Financial Times.

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Circle IPO has peculiar Facebook-like characteristic

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Circle IPO has peculiar Facebook-like characteristic

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, speaks at the 2025 TIME100 Summit in New York on April 23, 2025.

Jemal Countess | TIME | Getty Images

Stablecoin issuer Circle stands to be one of the first significant cryptocurrency companies to go public in the U.S. That’s not the only unusual aspect of its IPO.

In Circle’s updated prospectus on Tuesday, the company said it would sell 9.6 million shares in the offering, while existing shareholders would sell 14.4 million shares. It’s exceedingly rare in a tech IPO for more shares to come from investors than the company.

Facebook was one of the few notable exceptions. In the social network’s massive 2012 IPO, which raised a then-record $16 billion, 57% of the shares were sold by existing stakeholders. Circle is even higher at 60%.

Circle, the company behind the popular USDC stablecoin, didn’t provide a reason for its decision, and a spokesperson declined to comment. The company is profitable, having generated $64.8 million in net income in the latest quarter. It had almost $850 million in cash and equivalents, and stands to raise another $240 million in the IPO, based on the midpoint of its expected range of $24 to $26 a share, according to Tuesday’s filing.

One reason for the hefty amount of insider sales is likely the extended stretch of meager returns for venture capital firms. After the market peaked in 2021, soaring inflation led to increased interest rates, pushing investors out of risk and forcing late-stage tech companies to forego IPOs, often slashing their valuations to raise money in the private market. Wall Street was bullish on an IPO boom when President Donald Trump took office in January, but few debuts have taken place.

Add it all up, and Silicon Valley’s tech investors are badly in need of liquidity.

“Private investors are desperate for exists so they can distribute back to their investors,” said Lise Buyer, founder of IPO consultancy Class V Group, though she said she isn’t certain of the company’s motivations. “It probably reflects a multiyear drought in IPOs and a strong desire by early investors to get some liquidity.”

Redpoint Ventures’ Scott Raney: The IPO market is cracking open but still a few years away from wave

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, who co-founded the company in 2013, is offloading about 8% of his stake, selling 1.58 million shares, according to the prospectus. Sean Neville, a co-founder and former co-CEO, is slated to sell 11%, as is finance chief Jeremy Fox-Green.

Venture firms Accel, Breyer Capital, General Catalyst, IDG Capital, and Oak Investment Partners are all scheduled to sell about 10% of their stock. While insider sales could present a troubling signal to Wall Street, Buyer said the investors’ remaining holdings show they’re still expressing belief in the company.

“The big guys are holding enough so they still have skin in the game, so that shouldn’t alarm investors,” Buyer said.

For most tech IPOs over the years, the percentage of float coming from investors has been significantly below half. In Reddit’s IPO, insiders sold 31% of the shares. The percentage was 36% for online grocery delivery company Instacart in 2023.

Sometimes it’s much less than that. CoreWeave, a former cryptocurrency miner that now rents out Nvidia chips, went public in March, with executives and other shareholders making up 2.4% of the shares sold. Back in December 2020, Airbnb investors accounted for about 3% of IPO shares, and in DoorDash’s IPO that same week, existing investors didn’t sell any stock.

During times when IPOs are hot and stocks are flying after their debut, investors are incentivized to hold and pocket the gains after the lockup period expires. That’s not today’s market, which helps explain why half the shares sold in stock brokerage firm eToro’s IPO earlier this month came from existing investors.

Exit activity for U.S. VCs rose almost 35% last year to $98 billion after hitting the lowest in a decade in 2023, according to the National Venture Capital Association and PitchBook. The peak was over $750 billion in 2021.

“This continuation of the post-2021 liquidity drought highlights persistent issues around exit pathways and investor behavior,” the NVCA wrote in its annual yearbook, which was published in March.

In some cases, companies need insiders to sell stock just so there’s enough float for there to be a market for trading. If Circle wasn’t including investors in its share sale, it would be offering less than 5% of outstanding shares to the public. For eToro that number was 7%.

— CNBC’s Ari Levy contributed to this report.

WATCH: Circle CEO on launching the first stablecoin in Japan

Circle CEO on launching the first stablecoin in Japan

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23andMe to delist from Nasdaq, deregister with SEC

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23andMe to delist from Nasdaq, deregister with SEC

A sign is posted in front of the 23andMe headquarters in Sunnyvale, California, on Feb. 1, 2024.

Justin Sullivan | Getty Images

More CNBC health coverage

23andMe said it will file a Form 25 Notification of Delisting with the SEC on or around June 6, which would subsequently remove the stock from listing and registering with the Nasdaq.

The company said the Nasdaq had originally informed the company that a Form 25 would be filed in March, but since the exchange has not yet submitted the filing, 23andMe is doing so voluntarily.

23andMe exploded into the mainstream because of its at-home DNA testing kits that allowed customers to examine their genetic profiles. At its peak, the company was valued at around $6 billion.

But after going public via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company in 2021, the company struggled to generate recurring revenue and stand up viable research or therapeutics businesses.

Regeneron’s deal is still subject to approval by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Pending approval, it’s expected to close in the third quarter of this year.

WATCH: The rise and fall of 23andMe

The rise and fall of 23andMe

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Tesla shares climb as Musk pledges to be ‘super focused’ on companies ahead of Starship launch

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Tesla shares climb as Musk pledges to be 'super focused' on companies ahead of Starship launch

Elon Musk listens as reporters ask U.S. President Donald Trump and South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa questions during a press availability in the Oval Office at the White House on May 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

Tesla shares gained about 5% on Tuesday after CEO Elon Musk over the weekend reiterated his intent to home in on his businesses ahead of the latest SpaceX rocket launch.

The billionaire wrote in a post to his social media platform X that he needs to be “super focused” on X, artificial intelligence company xAI and Tesla as they launch “critical technologies” on the heels of a temporary outage.

“As evidenced by the uptime issues this week, major operational improvements need to be made,” he wrote, adding that he would return to “spending 24/7” at work. “The failover redundancy should have worked, but did not.”

An outage over the weekend briefly shuttered the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for thousands of users, according to DownDetector. Earlier in the week, the platform suffered a data center outage. X has suffered a series of outages since Musk purchased the platform in 2022.

Read more CNBC tech news

Musk has previously indicated plans to step away from his political work and prioritize his businesses.

During Tesla’s April earnings call he said that he would “significantly” reduce his time running President Donald Trump‘s Department of Government Efficiency.

In the last election cycle, Musk devoted time and billions of dollars to political causes and toward electing Trump in 2024. However, a story over the weekend from the Washington Post, citing sources familiar with the matter, said that Musk has grown disillusioned with politics and wants to return to managing his businesses.

Last week, Musk said in an interview at the Qatar Economic Forum that he planned to spend “a lot less” on campaign donations going forward.

The comments from Musk precede SpaceX’s Starship rocket Tuesday evening. Pressure is on for the company after two Starship rockets exploded in January and March.

Ahead of the launch, Musk announced an all hands livestream on X at 1 p.m.

Tesla is still facing fallout from Musk’s political foray, with protests at showrooms and other brand damage.

In April, Tesla sold 7,261 cars in Europe, down 49% from last year, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association.

WATCH: Elon Musk: We have seen a major rebound in demand

Elon Musk: We have seen a major rebound in demand

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