Bankman-Fried‘s FTX seeks $1 billion in new fundraising: report

FTX, one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the crypto industry today, is looking to flex its muscles even further with plans for new acquisitions.

But first, the Sam Bankman-Fried led crypto company needs to bring in new funding – which according to the latest news reports, is a new $1 billion round from big money investors.

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A CNBC report early Thursday quotes sources as saying that FTX is discussing the potential investment with key investors and seeks a fundraising round that places the exchange’s valuation at par with previous financing.

In January this year, Invezz highlighted FTX’s $400 million Series C funding round that saw its valuation rise from $25 billion to $32 billion. Investors in the round, who also backed FTX’s US-regulated affiliate FTX US in a similar $400 million round at a valuation of $8 billion, included Singapore’s Temasek, Tiger Global and SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2.

FTX eyes fresh growth

After splashing the cash despite the crypto winter in 2022, where FTX went on an acquisition spree as rivals floundered, Bankman-Fried’s company wants to expand even more.

As noted in the CNBC report, the exchange is eyeing fresh capital injection to ink other deals across the cryptocurrency and blockchain landscape.

The company has this year completed deals for Bitvo, Embed and Liquid and has an agreement in place to acquire crypto lender BlockFi – for which it extended a credit facility as the crypto winter bit. The company is also among those looking to acquire assets of bankrupt crypto lender Voyager.

FTX saw its revenue skyrocket in 2021, with the crypto bull market helping the exchange’s net income increase from $17 million in 2020 to over $388 million last year.