FTX’s venture backers included Patriots owner Robert Kraft and billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, new filings show
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the courthouse following his arraignment in New York City on December 22, 2022.
Ed Jones | Afp | Getty Images
It wasn’t just Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen.
The roster of high-profile investors who lost money betting on crypto exchange FTX also included New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, according to court filings released late Monday.
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Sam Bankman-Fried’s well-documented success at raising money and charming investors extended to a more expansive set of celebrity investors and big-name financers than was previously disclosed. FTX went through four fundraising rounds to reach a $32 billion valuation by early last year, before ultimately spiraling into bankruptcy in November.
Bankman-Fried, FTX’s co-founder and former CEO, has pleaded not guilty to multiple criminal charges, including fraud and money laundering. In December, he was released on a $250 million bond while awaiting trial.
For venture backers, FTX represents a loss of historic proportions. Sequoia Capital said in November that it had marked its investment of over $210 million down to zero. Before former equity holders can begin trying to recoup any of their investment, customers face a long road to recovery as the bankruptcy process winds its way through court and across dozens of jurisdictions.
FTX’s venture investors included a host of luminaries. Dan Loeb controlled over 6.1 million preferred shares through Third Point-connected venture funds. Rival exchange Coinbase held nearly 1.3 million preferred shares.
Jones, the founder of Tudor Investment, apparently owned shares through a series of family trusts. Kraft controlled 155,144 shares of preferred stock through previously undisclosed investments in FTX.
Brady, who at age 45 is the winningest quarterback in National Football League history, was a known FTX backer and a pitchman for the company. He held common stock in the company alongside Bündchen. The celebrity couple announced their divorce in October after 13 years of marriage.
CNBC has compiled and analyzed the following preferred share ownership using Delaware bankruptcy court filings.
Series B: July 2021
Despite being called a Series B raise, this July 2021 fundraising round was FTX’s first infusion of outside capital, excluding an early investment from Binance that was ultimately wound down. Investors included Paradigm and Sequoia, as well as Thoma Bravo and Third Point. The $900 million round valued FTX at $18 billion.
Jones, who told CNBC in October 2022 that his bitcoin exposure was “minor,” appears to have invested in FTX through a series of family trusts.
Series B-1: October 2021
Just months later, FTX closed a funding round for $420 million, which included many of the original Series B backers. The investor list expanded to include previously undisclosed capital from Alibaba co-founder Joe Tsai’s family office, Blue Pool, among others.
Series C: January 2022
As FTX and Bankman-Fried spent hundreds of millions of dollars on advertising deals and sponsorships, the company continued to seek venture money at a voracious pace. In January 2022, FTX closed its $400 million Series C round at a valuation of $32 billion.
FTX US Series A: January 2022
FTX, which was based in the Bahamas, created FTX US in response to U.S. regulations on cryptocurrency trading. Regulators have since alleged that FTX US was separated from the international arm of FTX in name only.
In trying to establish its independence, FTX US closed a $400 million funding round in January 2022 from investors including Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek and Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Vision Fund. Previously undisclosed venture backers for the round included Kraft and Daniel Och’s family office, Willoughby Capital.
According to bankruptcy filings and regulatory complaints, funds and customer assets moved freely among the FTX entities. Despite being partially regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, FTX US clients face an equally arduous process in bankruptcy court to try and retrieve some of their money.
Equity investors in FTX US, like those in FTX, are staring at a zero.
Technology
Cognition to buy AI startup Windsurf days after Google poached CEO in $2.4 billion licensing deal
In this photo illustration, a man seen holding a smartphone with the logo of US artificial intelligence company Cognition AI Inc. in front of website.
Timon Schneider | SOPA Images | Sipa USA | AP
Artificial intelligence startup Cognition announced it’s acquiring Windsurf, the AI coding company that lost its CEO and several other senior employees to Google just days earlier.
Cognition said on Monday that it will purchase Windsurf’s intellectual property, product, trademark, brand and talent, but didn’t disclose terms of the deal. It’s the latest development in an AI talent war, as companies like Meta, Google and OpenAI fiercely compete for top engineers and researchers.
OpenAI had been in talks to acquire Windsurf for about $3 billion in April, but the deal fell apart, and Google said on Friday that it hired Windsurf’s co-founder and CEO Varun Mohan. Google is paying $2.4 billion in licensing fees and for compensation, as CNBC previously reported.
“Every new employee of Cognition will be treated the same way as existing employees: with transparency, fairness, and deep respect for their abilities and value,” Cognition CEO Scott Wu wrote in a memo to employees on Monday. “After today, our efforts will be as a united and aligned team. There’s only one boat and we’re all in it together.”
Cognition didn’t immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. Windsurf directed CNBC to Cognition.
Cognition is best known for its AI coding agent named Devin, which is designed to help engineers build software faster. As of March, the startup had raised hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of close to $4 billion, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Both companies are backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. Other investors in Windsurf include Greenoaks, Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst.
“I’m overwhelmed with excitement and optimism, but most of all, gratitude,” Jeff Wang, the interim CEO of Windsurf, wrote in a post on X on Monday. “Trying times reveal character, and I couldn’t be prouder of how every single person at Windsurf showed up these last three days for each other and for our users.”
Wu said that the acquisition ensures all Windsurf employees are “treated with respect and well taken care of in this transaction.” All employees will participate financially in the deal, have vesting cliffs waived for their work to date and receive fully accelerated vesting for their, according to the memo.
“There’s never been a more exciting time to build,” Wu wrote.
WATCH: Google snatches Windsurf CEO after OpenAI deal dissolves
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg looks on before the luncheon on the inauguration day of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second presidential term in Washington on Jan. 20, 2025.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Meta on Monday said it has removed about 10 million profiles for impersonating large content producers through the first half of 2025 as part of an effort by the company to combat “spammy content.”
The crackdown is part of Meta’s broader effort to make the Facebook feed more relevant and authentic by taking action against and removing accounts that engage in “spammy” behavior, such as content created using artificial intelligence tools.
As part of that initiative, Meta is also rolling out stricter measures to promote original posts from creators, the company said in a blog post.
Facebook also took action against approximately 500,000 accounts that it identified to be engaged in inauthentic behavior and spam. These actions included demoting comments and reducing distribution of content, which are intended to make it harder for these accounts to monetize their posts.
Meta said unoriginal content is when images or videos are reused without crediting the original creator. Meta said it now has technology that will detect duplicate videos and reduce the distribution of that content.
The action against spam and inauthentic content comes as Meta increases its investment in AI, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Monday announcing plans to spend “hundreds of billions of dollars” on AI compute infrastructure to bring the company’s first supercluster online next year.
This mandate comes at a time when AI is making it easier to mass-produce content across social media platforms. Other platforms are also taking action to combat the increase of spammy, low-quality content on social media, also known as “AI slop.”
Google’s YouTube announced a change in policy this month that prevents content that is mass-produced or repetitive from being eligible for being awarded revenue.
This announcement sparked confusion on social media, with many users believing this was a reversal on YouTube’s stance on AI content. However, YouTube clarified that the policy change is aimed at curbing unoriginal, spammy and repetitive videos.
“We welcome creators using AI tools to enhance their storytelling, and channels that use AI in their content remain eligible to monetize,” said a spokesperson for YouTube in a blog post to clarify the new policy.
YouTube’s new policy change will take effect on Tuesday.
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