Drones, Fertility, and Defi — A Look at Alameda Research’s Massive $5.4 Billion Portfolio of Investments

Over the last few weeks, there’s been a lot of information revealed surrounding the recent FTX and Alameda Research disaster. On Dec. 6, the Financial Times (FT) published documentation that shows Alameda’s investment portfolio, which alleges the company spent more than $5 billion on hundreds of investments. Some of the funds went to odd investments like a fertility company called Ivy Natal and a drone manufacturer called Brinc Drones.

Alameda Invested in Close to 500 Firms and Projects

During the last two years, FTX and Alameda Research spent billions on deals, sponsorships, and investments. At the end of January 2022, FTX looked colossal after it raised $400 million from investors like Softbank Vision Fund 2, Tiger Global, Temasek, Paradigm, and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board.

After the Series C raise, FTX was valued at $32 billion and the former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) said FTX aimed to expand the firm’s “global reach.” After the revelations concerning Alameda’s balance sheet during the first week of November, FTX and SBF’s quantitative trading firm imploded.

Since then, FTX’s parent firm West Realm Shires Services, Alameda Research, and approximately 130 additional affiliated companies filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This week on Dec. 6, 2022, FT released documentation tied to Alameda Research’s investments, which were close to 500 investments that added up to roughly $5.4 billion.

In addition to FT, The Block’s VP of research, Larry Cermak, exported the entire list of Alameda-based investments into an excel sheet. Cermak further noted that Alameda’s largest investments include Genesis Digital Assets, Anthropic, Digital Assets DA AG, K5, and IEX.

If the data is accurate, the documentation shows that Alameda invested a lot of money into blockchain projects and foundations, tokens, and non-fungible token (NFT) projects as well. This includes Hole Tokens, Polygon, Near, 1inch, Lido, Xterio, Aptos, and Yuga Labs. Polygon for instance received $50,000,000 from Maclaurin Investments Ltd., otherwise known as Alameda Ventures.

Near gathered $50 million from FTX Ventures Ltd., and Maclaurin gave Near $30,000,000. FTX Ventures gave Yuga Labs roughly $50 million and Aptos scored $74.9 million from Clifton Bay Investments, also known as Alameda Research Ventures. Alameda invested in well known funds like the Multicoin Venture Fund II and the Skybridge Capital II fund.

Money went to Chinese news companies such as Blockbeats, and O’daily News. The company invested in Paxos, Messari, Starkware, Circle, Fanatics, Magic Eden, and Sky Mavis (Axie Infinity). An Ohio-based produce and vertical farming firm called 80 Acres got $25 million and $11.5 million was funneled to a firm called Geniome.

A whopping $500 million went to the artificial intelligence (AI) research firm Anthropic and $1.5 million went to a fertility venture called Ivy Natal. FT described Alameda’s portfolio as a “disparate bundle of nearly 500 illiquid investments split across 10 holding companies.” The FT author further notes that “FT makes no claim as to the data’s accuracy or completeness” as far as the documentation of Alameda’s investments are concerned.

What do you think about all the alleged investments Alameda made? Let us know what you think about this subject in the comments section below.