FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried leaves the courthouse following his arraignment in New York City on December 22, 2022.
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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.
Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg plans to visit South Korea, scheduling key meetings during the trip, according to a statement by Meta on Wednesday, which did not provide further details. Reportedly, Zuckerberg is anticipated to meet with Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee later this month to discuss AI chip supply and other generative AI issues, as per the South Korean newspaper Seoul Economic Daily, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
Alex Wong | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Meta extended its ban on new political ads on Facebook and Instagram past Election Day in the U.S.
The social media giant announced the political ads policy update on Monday, extending its ban on new political ads past Tuesday, the original end date for the restriction period.
Meta did not specify the day it will lift the restriction, saying only that the ad blocking will continue “until later this week.” The company did not say why it extended the political advertising restriction period.
The company announced in August that any political ads that ran at least once before Oct. 29 would still be allowed to run on Meta’s services in the final week before Election Day. Other political ads will not be allowed to run.
Organization with eligible ads will have “limited editing capabilities” while the restriction is still in place, Meta said. Those advertisers will be allowed to make scheduling, budgeting and bidding-related changes to their political ads, Meta said.
Meta enacted the same policy in 2020. The company said the policy is in place because “we recognize there may not be enough time to contest new claims made in ads.”
Google-parent Alphabet announced a similar ad policy update last month, saying it would pause ads relating to U.S. elections from running in the U.S. after the last polls close on Tuesday. Alphabet said it would notify advertisers when it lifts the pause.
Nearly $1 billion has been spent on political ads over the last week, with the bulk of the money spent on down-ballot races throughout the U.S., according to data from advertising analytics firm AdImpact.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, attends the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, in Davos, Switzerland, January 18, 2024 (L), and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos speaks during the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, Britain, November 2, 2021.
Reuters
Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, has raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion post-money valuation, the company confirmed Monday to CNBC.
Investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, Thrive Capital and Lux Capital, a Physical Intelligence spokesperson said. Khosla Ventures and Sequoia Capital are also listed as investors on the company’s website.
Physical Intelligence’s new valuation is about six times that of its March seed round, which reportedly came in at $70 million with a $400 million valuation. Its current roster of employees includes alumni of Tesla, Google DeepMind and X.
The startup focuses on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” per its website, and it aims to do this by developing large-scale artificial intelligence models and algorithms to power robots. The startup spent the past eight months developing a “general-purpose” AI model for robots, the company wrote in a blog post. Physical Intelligence hopes that model will be the first step toward its ultimate goal of developing artificial general intelligence. AGI is a term used to describe AI technology that equals or surpasses human intellect on a wide range of tasks.
Physical Intelligence’s vision is that one day users can “simply ask robots to perform any task they want, just like they can ask large language models (LLMs) and chatbot assistants,” the startup wrote in the blog post. In case studies, Physical Intelligence details how its tech could allow a robot to do laundry, bus tables or assemble a box.
To Barry Diller, a friend of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the decision for The Washington Post not to endorse a candidate in tomorrow’s presidential election was “absolutely principled” — and poorly timed, he said Monday on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
“They made a blunder — it should’ve happened months before, and it didn’t, and that’s the issue with it,” Diller said.
Diller is chairperson of both online travel company Expedia and IAC, which owns media platforms and websites like Dotdash Meredith and Care.com. He and Bezos appear to have been close friends for years, with Diller and his wife, fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, hosting Bezos’s engagement party to fiancee Lauren Sanchez.
The decision not to endorse a presidential candidate in the 2024 race or for future presidential races came directly from Bezos, the paper’s owner, according to an article published by two of the Post’s own reporters.
The move prompted public condemnation from several staff writers, a flood of at least 250,000 digital subscription cancellations and the resignations of at least three editorial board members.
Bezos defended his position in his own op-ed late last month, calling the move a “meaningful step in the right direction” to restore low public trust in media and journalism.
“Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election,” Bezos wrote, emphasizing that the decision to not endorse a candidate was made “entirely internally” and without consulting either campaign. “I wish we had made the change earlier than we did, in a moment further from the election and the emotions around it.”
Diller said he spoke to Bezos following the decision.
“I think it was absolutely principled,” Diller said. “The mistake they made — and it was a mistake admitted by him — was timing.”