According to sources familiar with the matter, InMobi Group, an Indian "AI+mobile advertising" company backed by legendary investor Masayoshi Son's Softbank Group Corp, is preparing for its planned initial public offering (IPO) on the Indian stock market and is seeking private loans of up to $350 million.

Sources indicate that part of the loan proceeds will be used to buy back shares held by Softbank Group Corp and other equity holders of the company. The remaining funds will be used for InMobi's capital expansion and market share expansion needs before its IPO in the Indian market, including strategic large-scale acquisitions, these sources added.

The sources said negotiations regarding the private loan are still ongoing and plans may still change. A representative from InMobi declined to comment.

In recent years, Indian companies have seen surging demand for private debt, partly driven by infrastructure initiatives led by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as well as new companies seeking to continuously expand their business coverage in the growing Indian market. According to a research report by EY, the transaction volume in India's private credit market reached approximately $9 billion in the first half of 2025, representing a significant 53% increase compared to the same period last year.

According to Startup India statistics, India is also home to the world's third-largest startup ecosystem, maintaining a stable annual growth rate of at least 12% in private credit demand. For example, the founder of Indian office space startup Table Space raised approximately 2 billion rupees (about $22.7 million) through private credit financing in June to purchase part of the company's shares before the company's planned public listing.

**What Kind of Startup is InMobi?**

According to the company's official website, InMobi was founded in Mumbai, India in 2007, with headquarters in Singapore. After receiving large-scale investment from Softbank Group Corp, it achieved "unicorn" status in 2011. The startup's other institutional investors or major investors include Kleiner Perkins and Sherpalo Ventures.

InMobi is a company focused on mobile advertising and marketing technology (AdTech/MarTech), with business covering both advertiser and media sides:

1) Advertiser side (DSP/Marketing Cloud): Provides programmatic advertising, mobile-end DSP and marketing tools optimized with AI and machine learning for bidding and retention/lifetime value (LTV) performance indicators.

2) Media side (SSP/Exchange/Monetization): Offers monetization for apps and mobile sites, advertising SDKs, identity solutions and compliance CMP, operating its own InMobi Exchange.

InMobi is also the parent company of Glance, India's Android lock screen content app - a mobile lock screen content/AI e-commerce platform that has received investment from Google Ventures. Glance includes Roposo, one of India's most popular short video platforms.

Glance mainly exists as a dynamic lock screen. When you light up the screen, you will see the latest pushed content, such as various wallpapers, important news, short videos, and it will also display advertising content from partners.

**Masayoshi Son's "AI Ambitions"**

The 67-year-old SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son hopes that Softbank Group Corp can play a core role in the wave of AI popularization globally, just as it did when it invested early in Alibaba and caught China's internet boom.

The core of this push is through ARM Holdings, the chip design leader in which Softbank Group Corp holds a 90% stake, as well as the "Stargate" ultra-large-scale data center project worth up to $500 billion in the United States with OpenAI, Oracle, and Abu Dhabi technology investment fund MGX.

As part of its multi-pronged foray into the AI field, Softbank Group Corp plans to invest up to $30 billion in OpenAI and has signed a $6.5 billion agreement to acquire renowned chip designer Ampere Computing Holdings. Masayoshi Son is also lobbying chip industry chain leaders like TSMC to participate in creating a $1 trillion AI manufacturing center in Arizona, the largest scale in history.

InMobi is a platform company focused on advertising and mobile content/e-commerce, but it is also a small piece of the puzzle in Softbank Group Corp's AI blueprint. Unlike ARM Holdings, which focuses on high-performance server CPUs for AI data centers in the AI infrastructure field, InMobi is at the AI-enabled application layer, using AI large models/generative AI for advertising placement, personalized internet experiences, and e-commerce conversion applications.

InMobi is increasing its investment in AI application areas, using AI to improve advertising placement and e-commerce conversion effectiveness. For example, it has invested about $200 million in Glance AI and generative AI advertising technology stack, striving to improve its business efficiency and AI valuation narrative.

UBS analyst teams predict that one of the strongest monetization paths for artificial intelligence technology is the increasingly mature business model of "AI + digital advertising." Examples include generative AI application software ecosystems significantly improving advertising placement efficiency (Meta's Advantage+ reducing manual costs by 30% while greatly improving digital advertising full-chain efficiency), interactive advertising (AI chatbot-driven efficient interaction modes between advertisers and digital advertising platforms) driving incremental budgets related to advertising placement, and TTD Kokai's AI real-time bidding system improving long-tail advertisers' ROAS (return on advertising spend) by 15%.