FTX Raises $900 Million, Company`s Valuation Reaches $18 Billion

One of the leading crypto exchanges to date, FTX, managed to secure $900 million in a Series B funding round with over 60 investors. Some of the biggest investors include Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase Ventures. The fundraising round is the largest ever for a crypto exchange to date.

Despite launching in 2019, the crypto exchange quickly managed to secure a valuation of $18 billion.

“It was a lot of work. But it looks like it's really going to pay off in terms of building a lot of relationships, especially outside of the ecosystem, that we didn't have before,”, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried noted.

Revenues for FTX have increased over ten times since the start of 2021, with over a million users actively using the platform, resulting in over $10 billion of daily trading volume.

“The majority of the funds would go towards mergers and acquisitions,” Sam Bankman-Fried added, emphasizing that the exchange is in a prime position to grow into one of the world's leading crypto exchanges.

Meanwhile, the exchange CEO denied the rumors about FTX's plans to buy banking giant Goldman Sachs, when funds are in place to do so. Instead, Bankman-Fried commented that several traditional financial companies can be in FTX’s crosshairs, but "I don't think Goldman is going to be one of them. I think that that one is rather large as a target."

“When you look at some of the companies that we would be interested to acquire—that we really think could help build out—our product base, our user base, those are much bigger ticket items so I think that that's by far the most likely source of funds”, the CEO of FTX concluded.

The funding round for FTX comes in line with its plans to expand to the US. In order to expand, however, FTX has to aim at regulatory and licensing acquisitions, which happen to be another potential acquisition avenue for the Hong Kong-based exchange.