Helius raises $500M for a Solana-focused treasury

Helius Medical Technologies launched a $500 million Solana-based corporate treasury reserve. The company made the initiative through an oversubscribed private investment in public equity (PIPE) offering of common stock at $6.88 per share. 

It also included stapled warrants exercisable at $10.134 for three years. Helius Medical Technologies agreed to raise $500 million in equity and up to $750 million in warrants, assuming full exercise. The firm revealed that the funds will be used to establish a crypto treasury strategy with the Solana token as its main reserve asset.

Helius seeks to leverage yield-generating properties of Solana

The initiative is led by venture capital firms Pantera Capital and Summer Capital, and participation is also from other companies like Avenir, Big Brian Holdings, FalconX, Arrington Capital, Animoca Brands, and HashKey Capital, among others. The neurotech company revealed that the offering will close on or around Thursday.

Helius said it chose Solana for its historically fast growth, which leads the industry in transaction revenue and processes more than 3,500 transactions per second. The digital asset has also been widely adopted, with around 3.7 million daily active wallets and over 23 billion transactions year to date. 

The neurotech firm added that Solana offers a ~7% native staking yield compared to non-yield-bearing assets like BTC. Helius revealed that it wants to leverage Solana’s native yield-generating properties to capture opportunities in DeFi.

“We believe that Solana is a category-defining blockchain and the foundation on which a new financial system will be built.”

–Dan Morehead, Founder and Managing Partner of Pantera Capital.

Morehead hopes that the initiative will help Helius substantially increase institutional and retail access to the Solana ecosystem and help fuel its adoption worldwide. The company also appointed Joseph Chee as director and executive chairman, Cosmo Jiang as board observer, and Dan Morehead as strategic advisor.

Cosmo Jiang, general partner at Pantera Capital, believes that there’s an opportunity to create shareholder value, which Michael Saylor pioneered with Strategy by accelerating Solana adoption. He revealed that he has experience in participating in the strategy at Twenty One Capital with Tether, Softbank, Cantor, Bitmine (BNMR) with Tom Lee, and EightCo with Dan Ives and Sam Altman.

Joseph Chee, founder and chairman of Summer Capital, believes that all capital market transactions, from tokenization to payments, are moving onto the blockchain. He said Helius aims to bridge public markets with the Solana network, where the company expects most activity to occur.

Helius plans to scale its SOL treasury position 

Helius plans to build an initial SOL position and expand its holdings over the next 12-24 months. The scaling initiative will include a capital markets program incorporating ATM sales and other proven strategies. The company is also evaluating staking, lending, and other opportunities in the ecosystem to generate revenue from the SOL Treasury.

Helius will continue to trade on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the ticker HSDT following the closing of the offering. Its updated treasury strategy will also take effect at that time.

The company hopes to maintain transparency in its holdings and strong engagement with the SOL ecosystem and community. Helius will also reveal updates on the offering, SOL acquisitions, treasury growth, relevant stockholder approvals, and governance measures in the coming weeks.

Helius’ stock price has surged by more than 141.67% at the time of publication to $18.27. Solana has plummeted by 3.52% in the last 24 hours and is exchanging hands at around $235.

Sign up to Bybit and start trading with $30,050 in welcome gifts