Seahawks sale: What we know about reported bidders Wyc Grousbeck, Aditya Mittal, Vinod Khosla

The first substantiated reports of potential new Seahawks owners emerged Thursday via reports from Sportico.com.

Sportico reported interest from two groups - one led by Wyc Grousbeck and Aditya Mittal, each currently Alternate Governors of the Boston Celtics, and another fronted by Vinod Khosla, a minority shareholder of the San Francisco 49ers.

Here's what we know about each potential new owner:

Wyc Grousbeck

Sportico reported that Grousbeck would team with Mittal to lead a group to make a bid on the Seahawks.

Of the two, it's Grousbeck who would likely be the most visible face of the ownership group.

As Sportico described it, Mittal - CEO of ArcelorMittal Steel - would remain living in London while "Grousbeck would reside in Seattle part-time and effectively operate the franchise."

Grousbeck is the son of H. Irving Grousbeck who co-founded Continental Cablevision in Boston in 1963 and became the co-director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Stanford.

Wyc Grousbeck, one of Irving Grousbeck's four children, founded a group to buy the Boston Celtics in 2002 from Paul Gaston for a reported $310 million.

The family had reportedly long had interest in potentially owning a major pro sports franchise with Irving Grousbeck reportedly making inquiries to buy the San Francisco Giants in 1992.

Irving Grousbeck, who turns 92 in July, directed Wyc to sell his majority share of the team in 2024 as part of estate planning and growing concerns over high payroll.

Wyc (which is short for Wycliffe) Grousbeck, 64, maintained a minority share of the team and transitioned from lead governor to alternate governor under new majority owner Bill Chisholm, with reports that he is set to remain in that role through 2028.

The Grousbeck family is said to have a $2.2 billion value, according to Forbes Magazine, which puts them on the lighter side of many pro sports team majority shareholders, which has some figuring Mittal as likely putting up a larger share of the funding. Mittal's net worth is put at $24 billion by Bloomberg.

Under Grousbeck, the Celtics won NBA titles in 2008 and 2024, and his tenure is generally viewed fondly by Boston sports fans.

"He's the (Boston sports) owner most devoted to winning, and it's a tough blow to lose him, wrote John Tomase of NBCSportsBoston.com in 2024

Gary Washburn, a longtime Celtics beat writer for The Boston Globe, said in an interview with The Seattle Times that Grousbeck was regarded as "very hands on" as an owner.

"Not talking about telling the coach who to play and that type of thing," Washburn said. "But being at every game, very present, big fan, big sports fan. …. He's given the GM and all that the resources that they need."

It's viewed that Wyc Grousbeck hoped to remain as owner of the Celtics, but his father led the decision to sell the team with other family members not wanting to retain the team.

Based on his Celtics history, Grousbeck would be a vast change from the almost 30-year reign of the Allen family in public visibility.

While Paul Allen did a few interviews he generally stayed in the background. Jody Allen has done no media interviews since taking over as team chair upon Paul's death in Oct., 2018.

Grousbeck has regularly given interviews to Boston area TV and radio stations and newspapers.

He played rhythm guitar in a classic rock cover band called French Lick (which is also the name of the Indiana hometown of Celtics legend Larry Bird) and is a co-owner of the luxury tequila brand Cincoro, whose other owners include Michael Jordan and former Lakers owner Jeanie Buss. His wife, Emilia Fazzalari, is a co-founder and executive chairperson of Cincoro.

Aditya Mittal

Mittal joined the current Celtics ownership group in May 2025, when it was reported he had agreed to invest $1 billion.

That reportedly made him the second-biggest investor behind William Chisholm, the leader of the group that bought the team for a reported $6.1 billion from Grousbeck.

Mittal's investment has been viewed as critical in fleshing out the funding for Chisholm's group, which won a blind auction with three other finalists for the right to purchase the Celtics.

Mittal, 50, has been mostly behind-the-scenes since, with CelticsWire calling him "a bit of a mystery to fans of the team" in a story last September.

He appeared at a news conference in September when Chisholm was formally introduced as the new majority owner.

At that news conference, he said he had been recruited by Grousbeck to join the new ownership group and said he was intrigued, in part, by memories of having attended a game at the old Boston Garden in the 1980s, saying "it was magical. I mean, I fell in love with it."

Mittal was born in India and raised in Indonesia and earned an economics degree from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in 1996.

He worked briefly in mergers and acquisitions on Wall Street before joining the family steel business in 1997. In 2006, he led the company's merger with rival Arcelor and succeeded his father as CEO in 2021. He has been on the board of investment banking giant Goldman Sachs since 2008.

Vinod Khosla

Khosla, 71 and a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has been involved with the 49ers for less than a year and only as a minority shareholder at a reported 3.1%.

When the 49ers announced the purchase of the share last May, they reported it as being by "the Khosla family, led by Neal and Vinod Khosla."

Neal Khosla is Vinod Khosla's son, and any potential purchase of the Seahawks might also be a family endeavor. Vinod Khosla would likely put up the bulk of the money, as he's reportedly worth more than $14.4 billion.

Neal Khosla spoke on behalf of the family when the purchase of the share of the 49ers was announced last May.

"My father and I have been season ticket holders for 30 years, going to games at The Stick starting when I was a child through the last 11 years at Levi's Stadium," he was quoted as saying by 49ers.com. "For us, becoming members of the 49ers family is a dream come true and we're honored to be a part of the team's future success and continued impact on the Bay Area community."

Neal Khosla is the CEO and co-founder of Curai, described as an AI-assisted telehealth startup founded in 2017 based in Palo Alto, Calif. He was named as one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023.

It's not immediately clear why he has interest in purchasing the Seahawks.

But on his personal website, Neal Khosla wrote that "I'm an obsessive sports fan" adding that "I've worked/consulted for professional sports teams like the San Francisco 49ers and Miami Heat, but more than anything I like watching sports and bringing a quantitative and analytical lens to understanding the game within the game.

Vinod Khosla was born in India and came to the U.S. in 1976 at age 21 and studied biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. In 1982, he co-founded Sun Microsystems, a pioneer in computer operating systems, servers and storage. Within six years, the company was doing $1 billion in sales.

Vinod Khosla's greater successes have come as a technology investor, including in early internet ventures. Khosla Ventures, launched in 2004, was an early investor in OpenAI, now one of the biggest players in artificial intelligence.

Khosla, who lives near Palo Alto, thinks AI will utterly disrupt the U.S. economy and has floated ideas, such as only taxing incomes above $100,000, as a way to soften the blow.

He's also rich enough - Forbes puts his net worth at $14.4 billion - not to care what anyone thinks.

"I can't be fired," he told Fortune recently. "I've never worried about a career. I don't need more money at age 71."

Seattle Times business report Paul Roberts contributed to this story.

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This story was originally published May 7, 2026 at 4:50 PM.