According to a report from CNBC, people with knowledge of the matter said that FTX is in talks to raise up to $1 billion in fresh funding that would value the Crypto exchange giant at around $32 billion.
The valuation remains unchanged from its February fundraise when the company secured $400 million in funding from high-profile investors including Japan's SoftBank Group Corp and Singapore's Temasek Holdings.
Two weeks after its venture arm, FTX Ventures, acquired a 30% stake in the New York-based alternative investment firm, SkyBridge Capital. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. FTX Ventures is a multi-stage venture capital firm founded by FTX CEO Sam Bankman- Fried in 2022.
The sources who asked not to be named said that the negotiations for funding are still ongoing and the terms could change. Sources told CNBC that FTX will use some of the fresh capital infusion to fuel more deal-making, on top of the $400 million round. An FTX spokeswoman didn't want to comment on the story.
With the winter causing some casualties, Bankman- Fried, 30, has become the White Knight who throws lifelines to digital asset platforms and cryptocurrencies that have faltered in recent months.
In July, FTX also gave BlockFi a $250 million revolving credit facility and on Friday announced a deal that gives FTX the right to purchase it based on performance triggers. Bankman-Fried said the goal of the bailouts was to protect customer assets and stop contagion from ricocheting through the system. In August FTX offered to buy bankruptCoinsors Voyager Digital, but was turned down for a low ball bid. He said that trust with consumers that things will work as advertised is incredibly important and that it is hard to get back. Bankman-Fried said that the firm still had enough cash to do a $2 billion deal if necessary because it gets more expensive with each of these, and that the firm still has enough cash on hand to do a $2 billion deal.
If all that mattered was one single event, we could get above a couple billion, he said, stressing that isn't his preference.
On one or two occasions, Bankman-Fried, who made billions of cryptanalyms in Asia beginning in 2017, said he has used his own cash to backstop failing companies when it didn't make sense for FTX to do so.
He said that FTX has shareholders and that we have a duty to do reasonable things by them and that I feel more comfortable incinerating my own money.
FTX was founded in 2019 by 29 year old MIT graduate Sam Bankman-Fried and his co-founder Gary Wang. Futures and options and spot trading are some of the products offered by the Bahamas-based exchange FTX. FTX has become a key player in the space, rivaling Coinbase and Binance, once an unknown startup.
According to Forbes, Bankman- Fried, who currently lives in Hong Kong, is now worth $25 billion, making him the richest person in the world in criptocurrency. Sam graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at the age of 21 in 2013 and was a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was skilled in math and loved to solve problems and give back to society.