Orlando Bravo, founder of personal fairness big Thoma Bravo, has vowed to keep away from cryptocurrency investments following the agency’s ill-fated funding within the now-bankrupt FTX trade.
Slightly over three years in the past, Bravo launched FTX as “the world’s most superior, subtle cryptocurrency trade” and invested $900 million, valuing the corporate at $18 billion.
In a latest interview with CNBC’s Squawk on the Avenue, Bravo mentioned the collapse of FTX, which went bankrupt in late 2022, and the fraud case in opposition to its founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s now serving a 25-year jail sentence. Bravo acknowledged that he and his firm are executed with cryptocurrency investments completely:
“If you make a mistake and also you get harm by one thing, our philosophy and my philosophy is you by no means contact it once more.”
It was a uncommon misstep for San Francisco-based Thoma Bravo, which has emerged as a dominant pressure in tech investing by orchestrating multibillion-dollar acquisitions of firms corresponding to FTX, cybersecurity vendor Proofpoint and software program corporations Anaplan and Coupa. The agency has returned an estimated $13 billion to buyers in 2023 alone. Its latest notable exits embrace the $3.6 billion sale of Imperva to Thales Group and the $4 billion sale of Barracuda Networks to KKR.
On the time of its FTX funding in 2021, Thoma Bravo, together with different main buyers, was using the wave of cryptocurrency worth appreciation. Bankman-Fried was seen as an trade visionary who had constructed FTX into one of many largest exchanges in simply two years. Bravo expressed pleasure about FTX’s potential to “create a brand new ecosystem for crypto” in a press launch on the time. Studies recommend that Thoma Bravo invested round $130 million within the spherical.
However by November 2022, FTX had collapsed and its worth had plummeted to zero as senior executives confronted accusations of embezzling over $8 billion in buyer funds.
Regardless of the setbacks, Bravo nonetheless sees potential in blockchain, the know-how that underpins cryptocurrencies. “I’m a giant believer in blockchain,” Bravo advised CNBC, calling it a “highly effective” device with a large number of purposes. Nonetheless, from an funding perspective, Bravo stays steadfast: “You make one mistake and then you definately transfer on.”
*This isn’t funding recommendation.
