Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX crypto exchange handed $25 billion valuation in latest funding round

• FTX has raised over $420 million in its latest funding round, putting its market valuation at $25 billion.
• The fundraising drew in 69 participants, including investors from Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, and Ribbit Capital.
• The new round comes after FTX has held the largest funding round in crypto history in June, raising $1 billion.

Sam Bankman-Fried's FTX has raised over $420 million in its latest funding round, putting the market valuation of the cryptocurrency exchange at $25 billion, the company announced Thursday.

The series B-1 fundraising drew in 69 participants, including investors from Sequoia Capital, Temasek Holdings, Ribbit Capital, and Tiger Global.

The new round comes after the exchange held the largest funding round in crypto history, raising $1 billion in June. Previously the company disclosed raising $900 million, which put its value at $18 billion, and on Thursday updated the total.

"Today we are focused on establishing FTX as a trustworthy and innovative exchange by regularly engaging with regulators around the world, and constantly seeking opportunities to enhance our offerings for digital asset investors," Bankman-Fried said in a statement Thursday.

"For this round, we capitalized on those strides and were able to partner with investors that prioritize positioning FTX as the world's most transparent and compliant cryptocurrency exchange."

FTX said the new cash injection will be used to fund the company's continued expansion, having just relocated to the Bahamas, and to address adjacent market opportunities including equities, prediction markets, NFTs, and videogame partnerships, according to Ramnik Arora, head of product at FTX.

Earlier in October, FTX launched an NFT marketplace on the solana blockchain for its US customers. A day later, rival Coinbase Global announced it is launching its own NFT marketplace by the end of the year. FTX in August acquired LedgerX, the first crypto derivatives platform approved in the US.

FTX, launched in 2019, is one of the newcomers in the crypto space yet has quickly grown to become one of the key players in the digital asset industry. Its userbase has grown 48%, and its average trade volume has increased 75%, now averaging $14 billion per day in daily volume.

FTX is also known for its high-profile collaborations. Earlier in the year, it signed a $135 million deal for the naming rights on the Miami Heat's stadium, which is now called FTX Arena. And it partnered with Major League Baseball in June to become the first crypto exchange sponsor in professional sports.