Construction startup Katerra Inc.—one of the bigger investments in SoftBank Group Corp.’s $100 billion Vision Fund—filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. after attempts to shore up its finances floundered.
In a release accompanying the Sunday filing, Katerra said its financial condition had deteriorated rapidly, partly because the company couldn’t get construction projects bonded or secure additional capital following the “unexpected bankruptcy filing of Katerra’s former lender.”
The release didn’t name the lender. Katerra’s filing came three months after another SoftBank Vision Fund-backed company, the lender Greensill Capital, filed for insolvency protection. Greensill had made hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to Katerra, The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Katerra’s bankruptcy filing marks the end of SoftBank’s attempts to shore up the finances of the startup, into which the Vision Fund had poured more than $2 billion, making it one of the fund’s larger investments.
The Japanese investor poured around $200 million into Katerra last May, then an additional $200 million infusion in December, which gave the Vision Fund a majority stake, the Journal reported. At the time, Katerra’s chief executive said the new investment would enable Katerra to avoid having to seek bankruptcy protection.
