Bankman-Fried invested in risk capital providers in his FTX exchange

SAM Bankman-Fried invested hundreds of million dollars in risk capital funds that are operated by companies such as Sequoia Capital, which according to documents presented by the Financial Times, also supported its battered crypto exchange FTX.

The 30-year-old entrepreneur who has tried to raise billions of dollars of emergency financing has a 200 million dollar investment in two funds by the US risk capital investor Sequoia, which is held through his crypto retail group Alameda Research.

Alameda also had minor investments in funds from the FTX risk-related sponsors Paradigm, Altimeter Capital Management, Sino Global Capital and Multicoin Capital, as the documents show.

The revelations throw light on Bankman-Fried's shops with blue chip investors, whose support has contributed to giving his business empire credibility before his sudden collapse this week.

FTX has collected USD 1.8 billion since its introduction in 2019 and was recently evaluated with USD 32 billion. The quick decline in the stock exchange last week was driven by concerns about their connections to Alameda.

The trading company, of which Bankman-Fried said on Thursday, it would be handled, FTX owes $ 10 billion, so two people familiar with the matter. Alameda assets include cryptocurrencies and billions of illiquid private equity investments such as risk capital funds, one of the people said.

Sequoia was a prominent cheerleader for Bankman-Fried. In September, she published a long hagiography of the FTX boss, in which it was said that his "intellect was as great as it was intimidating". This week Sequoia wrote his 210 million dollar investment in FTX to zero and deleted the article.

The company based in California is one of the most successful US venture capital investors and carefully pays attention to whom it allows you to invest in funds guided by Sequoia. One person who is close to Sequoia said that the company had some funds in which the founders supported by it could invest. Alameda had invested in other sequoia funds as Sequoia in Ftx.

Sequoia refused to comment on the Alameda investment.

An FTX spokesman did not immediately answer a request for comment. A spokesman for Alameda could not be identified immediately. The fund has closed its website this week.

According to the documents, the risk capital investments of Alameda included $ 60 million in a fund led by Sino Global Capital, $ 20 million in a paradigm fund, $ 10 million in two multicoin funds and $ 2.5 million in an altimeter fund.

paradigm declined a statement. This week it also wrote down its $ 278 million investment in FTX to zero. The other venture companies did not react immediately to the request for comment.

The Hedge funds from Bankman-Fried also invested $ 300 million in K5 Global, the risk capital company that Michael Kives founded. News that was unveiled by the billionaire Elon Musk to take on Twitter this year showed that Kives Musk sent an SMS to suggest Bankman-Fried as co-investor on Twitter. K5 did not react immediately to a request for comment.

the information previously reported on the risk capital investments by Bankman-Fried.