Former FTX president launches new crypto-currency company, raises more than $5 million from investors

Less than a week ago, Brett Harrison, the former president of FTX US, posted a 49-part Twitter thread outlining his side of the story when he worked for FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). On Friday, January 20, 2023, Harrison revealed that his new company, Architect, had raised $5 million from investors including Circle Ventures, Coinbase Ventures and SALT Fund.

Brett Harrison’s Architect aims to connect institutional investors through decentralized and centralized exchanges.

Brett Harrison the former president of FTX, who left the company in September 2022, has launched a health research project. This new venture aimed to attract institutions to the world of decentralized finance (defi). “This is a software company aiming to build an institutional-level infrastructure to connect various crypto-currency sites through decentralized and centralized exchanges “, Harrison explained, he told Techcrunch reporter Jacquelyn Melinek on Friday.

Harrison’s new venture and fundraising follows the former FTX US president’s account of how he left the company and his relationship with its co-founder, Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF). Harrison explained that his relationship with SBF and FTX’s deputy CEOs “had reached a point of total deterioration“. In the 49-part Twitter thread, Harrison mentioned a new crypto startup he was working on. Brett Harrison tweeted at about the fundraiser on Friday and said:

1/ I’m very happy to announce the founding of @Architect_xyz and the closing of our $5m seed round! https://t.co/NCMdWwwbA1

– Brett Harrison (@BrettHarrison88) January 20, 2023

Brett Harrison added:

Architect will build institutional-grade trading technology that streamlines the structure of the crypto market, making it easy and secure for enterprises and large traders to access decentralized protocols and centralized exchanges. Architect’s products will embody our commitment to security, self-preservation, scalability and open source design.

In addition to Circle Ventures and Coinbase Ventures, Architect received a capital injection from Motivate Venture Capital, SALT Fund, SV Angel, P2P Validator, Third King Venture Capital, Shari Glazer and Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of Skybridge Capital. Harrison’s fundraising for Architect also follows a recent interview with FTX’s new CEO, John J. Ray III, who told the Wall Street Journal that FTX was exploring the possibility of restarting the now-defunct crypto-currency exchange.