Bankman-Fried says FTX prepared to spend billions on acquisitions: Bloomberg

Exchanges • May 28, 2022, 4:14AM EDT

Crypto exchange FTX is ready to spend billions of dollars for stakes in other companies, Chief Executive Officer Sam Bankman-Fried told Bloomberg in an interview.

The billionaire CEO, who’s also a co-founder of FTX, said on Friday that recent fundraising of more than $2 billion by the company and its US entity may be used for the investments aimed at expanding its range of services to its customers.

“FTX is a profitable company,” he said. “You can look at the amount that we’ve raised over the last year or two — it’s a few billion dollars. That gives maybe a sense of where we are in terms of cash that was explicitly viewed from a potential acquisition angle.”

In January, FTX raised $400 million at a $32 billion valuation, bringing the total raised in the prior half year to near $2 billion, Bloomberg said, adding that its US entity separately raised $400 million.

This story has been corrected to remove a reference to a report from May 2021.

About Author

Mike Millard has worked as an editor for Bloomberg and Reuters, various newspapers and websites. He lived in Asia for more than two decades and now calls the Greek island of Corfu home. He is the author of three books.