FTX looking to raise $1B in funding at $32B valuation

Sam Bankman-Fried‘s (SBF) exchange FTX is reportedly in talks with investors to raise funding up to $1 Billion at a valuation of $32 billion.

Singaporean investment companies Temasek, SoftBank, and Tiger Global are among existing investors who agreed to fund FTX in the upcoming round.

The exchange giant also held a funding round in January and raised $400 million to reach $32 billion in valuation. Meanwhile, its U.S.-based derivative unit, FTX US, raised another $400 million for itself in the same round and increased its valuation to $8 billion.

Investments so far

SBF has been focusing on investments and acquisitions from all angles. On May 2022, FTX purchased 7.6% of Robinhood for $648.3 million. Even though it’s a small investment compared to the scale of FTX, it still saved Robinhood’s struggling stocks and led to an increase of 36%.

One month later, SBF lent a hand to BlockFi. CryptoSlate reported the news when SBF was in talks with the troubled exchange and two other potential investors. As a result of the negotiations, SBF loaned $400 million in credit to the exchange. Afterward, BlockFi offered the option to purchase the entire company for up to $240 million depending on its performance.

In July, it was revealed that South Korean exchange Bithumb and FTX had been negotiating an acquisitions agreement for two months. Even though the negotiations are not concluded yet, purchasing Bithumb would serve two main goals of SBF: expanding over Asia and preventing further contagion in the market.

In the meantime, SBF-owned Alameda Ventures have been continuing its investments separately. In June, Alameda loaned 15,000 Bitcoin (BTC) and $200 million in cash and USDC to Voyager Digital in an attempt to save the due to its exposure to Three Arrows Capital. However, the attempts weren’t enough, as both entities went bankrupt in the following weeks.

Ivoyagernvestments before the winter market

In reality, mergers and acquisitions have been a top priority for FTX even before the winter market started. In the early days of the bear market, FTX US president Brett Harrison said that the company was looking to purchase local businesses to expand abroad.

He said:

“We’re doing that globally, in places like in Japan, Australia, in Dubai, different places where we’ve been able to either partner with local companies or sometimes do acquisitions to be able to get licenses that we need,”

Following their plan, FTX inked an agreement to acquire the Japanese crypto exchange Liquid on February 2022. The amount spent by FTX was not disclosed; however, Liquid was an essential step for FTX’s expansion over Asia.