Wall Street savvy Matt Zhang leads AVAX One: launching US$550 million in financing to build an on-chain version of Berkshire Hathaway
AgriFORCE, an agricultural technology company, changed its name to AVAX One and raised US$550 million in funding led by Hivemind founder Matt Zhang, striving to become the Berkshire Hathaway of on-chain finance.
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On the 23rd of this week, the American agricultural technology company AgriFORCE Growing Systems officially changed its name to AVAX One, and announced the launch of a fundraising plan of up to US$550 million, becoming the first company to focus on Avalanche (AVAX) tokens and list on Nasdaq. This transaction was led by Matt Zhang, founder of Hivemind Capital and Wall Street veteran, which once again took a critical step in the integration of traditional capital markets and the blockchain world.
The birth of the first Avalanche-focused listed company
AVAX One CEO Jolie Kahn said that the company’s top priority is to create a “professionally managed and regulated” vehicle for public market investors so that shareholders can directly hold AVAX. After the news was announced, the stock price of the original AGRI immediately rose sharply, reflecting investors' high expectations for this transformation. According to the press release, the company hopes to maximize the amount of AVAX that can be distributed per share through concentrated holdings and staking.
Matt Zhang brings Wall Street DNA
Matt Zhang, who was nominated as chairman, has been responsible for global structured transactions at Citibank for 16 years and has a thorough understanding of capital operations and risk control. Hivemind Capital, which he founded, focuses on institutional-grade crypto investments, and now wants to bring his rich experience in structured finance to AVAX One. He proposed to shape the company into "the Berkshire Hathaway of the on-chain financial economy", giving Wall Street the opportunity to engage with blockchain infrastructure in a more familiar way.
Matt Zhang emphasized:
"Disciplined accumulation of AVAX and creation of cash flow through staking, and then moving stable financial technology business to Avalanche can form an ever-expanding growth flywheel."
How US$550 million in funding works
AVAX One fundraising is conducted in two phases: the first phase has completed approximately US$300 million PIPE, subject to shareholder approval; the second phase will raise up to an additional $250 million through equity-linked instruments. If all is in place, the company plans to hold more than $700 million in AVAX and pledge the tokens on the main network to obtain an annualized return of approximately 6.7%, bringing immediate cash flow to the company.
Different from simply taking passive positions, the next step for AVAX One is to acquire financial technology companies with cash flow and integrate these businesses into Avalanche. Matt Zhang believes that through the three things of "currency holding + mergers and acquisitions + on-chain", the company's market value can grow simultaneously with the AVAX ecosystem, creating a premium above the net asset value (NAV) in the long term.
The imagination of on-chain finance
This fundraising is supported by more than 50 institutions, including Hivemind, Galaxy Digital, Digital Currency Group, Kraken, etc. The strategic advisory group is also star-studded, including Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, and Brett Tejpaul, head of Coinbase Institutional. Scaramucci said:
"Asset tokenization will be the biggest theme in finance in the next ten years, and Avalanche has become an institutional-level platform for this wave."
Driven by Hivemind and Matt Zhang, AVAX One attempts to copy the "Buffett model" and use on-chain tools to reshape the asset management ecosystem. However, the market still needs to observe regulation and price fluctuations, but this cross-border cooperation has opened up a new way for AVAX to enter mainstream finance, and also provides investors with another option to participate in the on-chain financial economy.
