Financial Times Reveals FTX Venture Capital: Over 500 Investment Portfolios, Totaling Over $5.4 Billion

Original Title: 《Revealed: the Alameda venture capital portfolio》

Authors: Kadhim Shubber, Bryce Elder, Financial Times

Translation: Guo Qianwen, ChainCatcher

In addition to running a non-redeeming cryptocurrency exchange and owning a non-hedging hedge fund, SBF also has a venture capital fund that does not use its own capital for ventures.

Compared to other departments of the FTX Group, the venture capital department can provide information to help people understand where the funds went; below is the destination of the funds.

The screenshot above and all the screenshots below are taken from an Excel spreadsheet from early November, when SBF was seeking rescue funds amid a run on FTX customer deposits. According to a person familiar with the rescue efforts, the document shows that the private equity portfolio of Alameda Research—some of which is mixed with FTX funds—was used as collateral in an attempt to secure new credit lines for the troubled group.

This diversified portfolio, consisting of nearly 500 illiquid investments, is divided into 10 holding companies. The total investment value given in the spreadsheet exceeds $5.4 billion.

The investment portfolio serves as a pillar to help FTX recover losses as much as possible during bankruptcy, and may provide regulators insight into whether the group's trading and exchange operations were indeed conducted separately as claimed. In an interview with the Financial Times, SBF acknowledged his involvement in Alameda's venture capital activities, but so far he has avoided questions about the misuse of FTX customer funds.

From the spreadsheet, the boundaries between SBF's companies are blurred. The two largest holding companies of Alameda, namely cryptocurrency miner Genesis and AI research group Anthropic, were also included in the draft FTX balance sheet released by FTAV last month. (Semafor later reported that FTX had seized certain assets of Alameda after margin calls.)

As previously reported, the portfolio includes shares of FTX supporters Sequoia Capital and Anthony Scaramucci's SkyBridge Capital, as well as investments in Elon Musk's SpaceX and Boring Company projects through K5.

Among Alameda's remaining investments, cryptocurrency and DeFi projects make up the majority. However, the list also includes many startup video game studios and betting platforms, online banks, publishers, a fertility clinic, a military drone manufacturer, and a vertical farming company.

Some of the entries have no clear connection to active businesses, suggesting they may be misspellings or mislabeling. Here, FT Alphaville has excluded entries that did not specify the type of investment, removing about a dozen names, with a stated total investment amount of approximately $100 million. All other data is presented to potential FTX investors. FT makes no claims about the accuracy or completeness of the data.

When asked why FTX used customer funds to support Alameda, SBF repeatedly defended that he was unaware. The former FTX CEO said he chose not to participate in Alameda's trading and risk management to avoid conflicts of interest, so he was not fully aware of its predicament until last month.

However, SBF told the Financial Times that he participated in discussions about Alameda's financial health and borrowing in early summer. He added that some of the venture capital investments made by Alameda "actually, some of them are margin."

The leak of Alameda's spreadsheet occurred a month before SBF's current media blitz, carrying a warning as it may only be a selective presentation of part of the content and not reliable. As FT's Joshua Oliver reported:

"SBF attempted to explain the reasons for the mistakes, but his explanations were filled with warnings, repeatedly mentioning memories he could not clearly recall. He mentioned a lack of 'confidence' in his answers at least a dozen times, referring to other responses as 'fantasies' or 'poor answers.' At one point, he clasped his head with both hands and paused for half a minute."

The former CEO of Alameda, SBF's former girlfriend Caroline Ellison, could not be reached for comment.