Matrixport seeks $1.5 billion funding estimate after FTX collapse

Matrixport Technologies Pte, one of Asia’s biggest crypto lenders, is targeting $100 million in funding at a higher valuation, despite the fall of FTX resounding across the digital asset market.

The Singapore outfit has commitments from lead investors for $50 million at a valuation of $1.5 billion in the round, up from $1 billion a year earlier, according to known sources. The deal has yet to be finalized and the company is still seeking investors for the other half of the round, said the people, soliciting not to be named as discussing private information. Now it’s not immediately clear who the round’s lead investors are.

Matrixport customarily participates with key stakeholders as part of its regular course of business, including investors devoted to participating and enabling its vision as a digital assets financial services provider, the company’s public relations head Ross Gan said, substantiating the fundraising plan.

Matrixport, founded by crypto billionaire Wu Jihan, has its place in a category of firms aiming to create a familiar Wall Street formula for the virtual-asset ecosystem. It offers crypto financial services from custody to trading and structured products – to both institutional and retail businesses. In Asia, it participates with firms like Babel Finance, which is restructuring after taking strikes from this year’s crypto meltdown, and Temasek Holdings Pte. backed Amber Group.

Matrixport said it has no probability of insolvency

Investors have been burned by a series of high-profile crypto failures in recent months, generating fresh concerns over loose regulation of the industry and a lack of guardrails to protect client assets. In the aftermath of FTX’s collapse, Matrixport said this month it has no probability of insolvency in Sam Bankman-Fried’s realm but dozens of its customers incurred losses via exposure to FTX-linked products on its platform. Matrixport has said it faces no risk of insolvency, but a total of 79 users on its platform had suffered losses in products linked in FTX.

In August last year, Matrixport attained unicorn status in a funding round that was led by partners of Israeli-Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s DST Global, Hong Kong tycoon Adrian Cheng’s C Capital, and K3 Ventures, founded by Kuok Meng Xiong, the grandson of Malaysia’s richest person Robert Kuok.

Matrixport says it handles $5 billion of trades each month and has tens of billions of dollars of assets under management and custody, according to an investor deck viewed by Bloomberg News. The firm engages close together to 300 people, it states.

In 2013, Wu partnered with Micree Ketuan Zhan to launch Bitmain Technologies, a supplier of specialized hardware well-known as mining rigs which are intended for the single task of adding transactions to bitcoin’s blockchain. The people who own the hardware earn, or mine, new bitcoins by making their processing power accessible to the network.

Wu, the co-founder of crypto-mining behemoth Bitmain Technologies Ltd., turned his second venture into a unicorn last summer when Matrixport raised more than $100 million from backers including DST Global and Tiger Global. Matrixport also counted IDG Capital and Dragonfly Capital as investors.

In 2019, Wu spun Matrixport off from Bitmain, after the world’s largest maker of Bitcoin mining rigs ran into a cash crunch. The Chinese crypto magnate now serves as chairman of Matrixport and his mining firm Bitdeer Technologies Holding Co.