FTX Valuation Rises to $18B After Softbank, Coinbase, Sequoia Invest

Crypto derivatives exchange FTX has raised money at an $18 billion valuation. Investors included SoftBank Group, Coinbase Ventures, Sequoia Capital, the Paul Tudor Jones family, Alan Howard, among others.

The series B fundraising round of $900 million values FTX at $18 billion. It is also the largest private equity round in the crypto industry’s history.

Ribbit Capital, Paradigm, Daniel Loeb’s Third Point, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sino Global Capital, Multicoin, VanEck, and Circle also participated in the round that included more than 60 investors.

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) told Forbes Binance has recently given up its equity stake in FTX. In December 2019, Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, invested an undisclosed sum in FTX. “We’ve exited completely,” CZ said, “we’re still friends but we no longer have any equity relationship.”

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried told The Wall Street Journal that FTX plans to use its new funding to expand into regulated markets. Potentially, that could include acquisitions of companies licensed to do financial activities in various countries, he said, “we’re looking to get licenses where we can.”

On whether FTX would go public, Bankman-Fried told Forbes that there’s no “ticking clock on our need to go public.”