Sam Bankman-Fried’s venture unit placed bets on a military drone maker, a fertility clinic, and a vertical farming company, the FT reported. Alameda Research’s private equity portfolio reportedly had over 500 investments. Screenshots of an Excel spreadsheet detail the firm’s wide array of investments. Loading Something is loading.
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Alameda Research, the crypto trading firm started by disgraced founder Sam Bankman-Fried, had hundreds of holdings in its private equity portfolio, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.
In an attempt to secure a new credit line to save customer deposits on Bankman-Fried’s embattled FTX, the 31-year-old reportedly offered some of these investments (and some of FTX’s) as collateral, according to the publication, citing a person familiar with the “rescue effort.”
Just when it seems that the Bankman-Fried saga couldn’t get any stranger, screenshots of an Excel spreadsheet show a wide array of investments, some befitting a crypto firm, and others not so much.
The report shows nearly 500 investments, valued at more than $5.4 billion. These were scattered across 10 holding companies, with the divisions between Bankman-Fried’s ventures being extremely blurred. (Insider was unable to verify the entries on the spreadsheet, which was dated early November.)
“As well as forming a central plank in efforts to maximise recoveries from FTX’s bankruptcy, the portfolio might offer regulators insight into whether the group’s trading and exchange businesses were ever operationally separate as claimed,” according to the FT.
One of the largest investments was to crypto miner Genesis Digital Assets at over $1 billion, but the slew of bets may range far from just crypto. The spreadsheet indicates investments in military drone maker BRINC and fertility startup Ivy Natal for $1.5 million.
Neither companies immediately responded to Insider’s request for comment or listed any Sam Bankman-Fried’s investment entities as backers on their websites. “Some entries [in the spreadsheet] have no clear link to an active business, suggesting they may be misspelt or mislabeled,” per the FT report.
Bankman-Fried did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. The former billionaire, who got his start at quant-focused prop trading shop Jane Street, has chalked up the allegations of misuse of customer money to accounting mistakes.