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Runners-Up Offered Seahawks Stake After Losing Out on Team

Vinod Khosla’s family beat out a group led by Wyc Grousbeck and Aditya Mittal for the Seahawks. Now, members of that consortium have been invited to join the new ownership group.

Kevin Ng-Imagn Images

The Seahawks’ newly approved owners are finalizing their group of investors ahead of the imminent closing of their $9.612 billion deal to purchase the team from the Paul G. Allen estate.

The new ownership group is led by the family of venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. NFL team owners voted unanimously last week in Atlanta to ratify the deal. That came after the league’s finance and ownership policy committees previously voted unanimously to recommend approval.

The closing of the deal is expected “very soon,” a source told Front Office Sports on Monday. Sources had previously said they expected the deal to close in September. The Seahawks host the Patriots in the NFL’s season-opening game Sept. 9 at Lumen Field, a rematch of February’s Super Bowl LX in Santa Clara, California, which the Seahawks won 29–13.

The Khosla-led ownership group could add investors from the runner-up bidding group that it beat out to purchase the team, a source told FOS. The other finalist in the bidding, FOS previously reported, was a group headed by Aditya Mittal and Wyc Grousbeck. Mittal is the CEO of steel and mining company ArcelorMittal and son of the company’s executive chairman, Lakshmi Mittal, whose family was recently part of a group that paid billions of dollars for a minority stake in Liverpool. Grousbeck was previously the governor of the Celtics and remains a minority owner after his family sold the team to a group led by Bill Chisholm in a $6 billion deal.

Members of the Mittal-Grousbeck bidding group have had discussions about the possibility of joining the Khosla ownership group, two sources said. One of those sources said the members of the runner-up group had been invited to join. Following the publication of this story, a second source confirmed the conversations but said they were initiated by members of the Mittal-Grousbeck group. It’s not clear which investors, if any, have agreed to join.

Khosla referred a question about the matter to Allen & Co., the New York investment banking firm that oversaw the sale process on behalf of Paul Allen’s estate. Allen & Co. declined to comment. (The late Microsoft cofounder was not related to the family that founded the investment bank.) 

A representative for Mittal declined to comment, and Grousbeck did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Khosla, 71, is the cofounder of Sun Microsystems and the founder of Khosla Ventures. His net worth is an estimated $13.1 billion, according to Forbes. His wife, Neeru Khosla, will serve as the Seahawks’ controlling owner. Their son, Neal Khosla, will have a significant leadership role in the ownership group. He is the CEO of Curai, an artificial intelligence healthcare company.

The Khosla family holds a 3.1% stake in the 49ers that was acquired in May 2025. That interest will have to be divested at some point, although similar NFL ownership situations in the past have taken months to be resolved. Khosla is not required to sell his 49ers stake before the Seahawks deal is completed. The 49ers will have final say over whom he sells to, a source familiar with the matter tells FOS.

Under NFL ownership rules, the primary owner must hold at least a 30% ownership stake and the investment group can have no more than 25 members.

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