-Eightco (NASDAQ: ORBS) Secures $125 Million in Institutional Commitments Led by Bitmine (NYSE: BMNR), Cathie Wood’s ARK Invest, and Payward to Expand into Next-Gen Technology
ORBS makes strategic investments in category-leading companies such as OpenAI and Beast Industries.
Tom Lee, President of Bitmine (NYSE: BMNR), joins the board of directors to support ORBS’s long-term investment strategy.
ARK Invest joins ORBS as a partner, providing strategic advice and private market intelligence; allocates $25 million to ORBS.
Brett Winton, Head of Futurology at ARK Invest, will join the ORBS board of directors as an advisor.
Payward, the parent company of global cryptocurrency platform Kraken, commits $25 million to ORBS.
The company is backed by a group of strategic and institutional investors including: Bitmine Immersion Technologies (BMNR), MOZAYYX, ARK Invest, Payward, World Foundation, Coinfund, Discovery Capital Management, FalconX, Pantera, GSR and more.
, /PRNewswire/ — Eightco Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: ORBS) (“ORBS” or the “Company”) today announced new financing commitments of $125 million, led by $75 million of Bitmine (NYSE: BMNR) and a commitment of at least $25 million from ARK Invest. Paywardparent company of the global platform Kraken cryptocurrencieshas also committed $25 million to ORBS. Capital supports the expansion of ORBS towards investing in technology that defines the next generation of artificial intelligence, infrastructure blockchain and global digital platforms for consumers.
ORBS also announced the closing of its initial strategic investments of $50 million in OpenAI and $25 million in MrBeast and Beast Industries. These investments position ORBS as a key center in cutting-edge AI technologies and content creation, expanding its portfolio to include stakes in world-leading innovative companies. The company maintains its investments in Worldcoin, co-founded by Sam Altman, and Ethereum, as a strong supporter of the ERC-20 protocol.
The company has appointed Tom Lee, president of Bitmine, to join the ORBS board of directors. Brett Winton, Head of Futurology at ARK Invest, will serve as an advisor to the ORBS board of directors. Dan Ives will step down as president of ORBS.
“Bitmine invested in ORBS because we believe this company is at the center of some of the most important future needs and developments for AI,” said Tom Lee, president of Bitmine and newly appointed independent director of ORBS. “In my opinion, there is tremendous synergy between Proof of Human (Worldcoin), OpenAI’s founding models, and connectivity with the world’s largest content creator, MrBeast. And the ARK investment team, known for its pioneering work in identifying exponential opportunities, is driving even more synergy and innovation in this company.”
World was created to address the crucial question of distinguishing between real humans and bots in the age of AI. On the creation of World, Sam Altman said: “We needed a way to identify and authenticate humans in the age of mainstream AI. We needed a way to know what content had been created by a human, by an AI. We wanted to make sure that humans remained special and central in a world where the internet was going to have a lot of AI-generated content. We wanted a way to think about how we would distribute access to these systems.”
“ORBS is undertaking a unique initiative at the intersection of AI, blockchain and creator-powered platforms,” said Cathie Wood, Founder, CEO and CIO of ARK Invest. “At ARK Invest, we focus on technologies with the potential to transform the global economy. We are excited to partner with ORBS to support their strategy as these technologies scale over the next decade.”
“Technology revolutions tend to follow a power law dynamic: a small number of platforms capture a disproportionate share of the value. ORBS is positioning itself at the intersection of three of these capitalization networks: AI, crypto infrastructure and global digital distribution,” said Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Kraken and Payward. “The capital invested in that convergence has the potential to scale non-linearly, and we are excited to support a strategy designed to capture that asymmetry.”
ABOUT EIGHTCO HOLDINGS INC.
Eightco Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: ORBS) expands its mission by acquiring stakes in leading AI model OpenAI and leading content creators MrBeast and Beast Industries. Through investments and strategic alliances, ORBS sits at the intersection of blockchain infrastructure, artificial intelligence and next-generation consumer platforms. The company is focused on generating long-term value for shareholders, aligning capital with the transformative technologies that shape the future of humanity.
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ABOUT BITMINE
Bitmine(NYSE AMERICAN: BMNR) is a Bitcoin mining company with operations in the US. The company is investing its excess capital to become the world’s leading Ethereum treasury company, implementing an innovative digital asset strategy for institutional investors and public market participants. Guided by its “5% alchemy” philosophy, the company is betting on ETH as its primary treasury reserve asset, leveraging native protocol-level activities such as staking and decentralized financial mechanisms. The company will launch MAVAN (Made-in America VAlidator Network), a dedicated staking infrastructure for Bitmine assets, in the first quarter of 2026.
For more information, follow us on X:
https://x.com/bitmnr
https://x.com/fundstrat
ABOUT BEAST INDUSTRIES
Beast Industries is a multi-faceted entertainment, consumer products and CPG company, founded and led by YouTube creator, entrepreneur and philanthropist Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast. A global entertainment powerhouse, MrBeast is the most subscribed YouTube channel in the world, with more than 450 million subscribers and more than 5 billion monthly views across all its channels. Recognized as the #1 creator on Forbes’ Top Creators list (2023) and featured on the TIME 100 and the first-ever TIME100 Climate lists, Donaldson has built Beast Industries into a platform that encompasses innovative content, record-breaking competition formats, and some of the fastest-growing CPG launches in history, including the Feastables snack brand. The company also drives large-scale social impact through initiatives such as #TeamTrees, #TeamSeas, #TeamWater and Beast Philanthropy, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that has provided more than 20 million free meals and funded critical infrastructure projects around the world. At its core, Beast Industries combines entertainment, innovation and purpose to create culturally resonant intellectual property, market-leading products and lasting change.
ABOUT PAYWARD
Payward, Inc. is a unified financial infrastructure platform that powers a family of products advancing an open global financial system. Built on a single, shared architecture, Payward enables customers to hold, trade, earn, pay and invest in diverse asset classes without friction or fragmentation.
At its core, Payward provides the infrastructure behind Kraken and a growing set of products designed specifically for each client, such as NinjaTrader, Breakout, xStocks, and CF Benchmarks.
Payward separates infrastructure from product expression. Each product surface is designed for a specific customer segment, regulatory regime and use case, operating on the same global basis:
- A global liquidity fund
- A unified risk and margin management engine
- A guarantee and settlement system
- A single licensing and compliance framework
This shared architecture allows Payward to scale efficiently, launch new products at low marginal cost and serve diverse global markets, while maintaining consistent risk management, regulatory integrity and operational resilience.
For more information about Payward, visitwww.payward.com.
Forward-looking statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, may be considered forward-looking. Terms such as “plans,” “expects,” “will,” “anticipates,” “continues,” “expands,” “advances,” “develops,” “believes,” “guidance,” “target,” “may,” “remains,” “projects,” “outlook,” “intends,” “estimates,” “could,” “should,” and other terms of similar meaning and expression are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain such terms. Forward-looking statements are based on management’s current beliefs and assumptions, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, and are not guarantees of future results. Actual results could differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements due to various factors, including, without limitation: the Company’s inability to direct the management or operations of private companies in which it is not a majority shareholder; the risk of loss or reduction of the Company’s strategic investments; the Company’s ability to comply with Nasdaq’s continued listing requirements; unexpected costs, charges or expenses that reduce the Company’s capital resources or otherwise delay capital investment; the inability to obtain sufficient capital to finance or expand its business operations or strategic investments; regulatory changes, future legislation and regulations that negatively affect the adoption of digital assets or artificial intelligence; and changes in public and government positions on digital assets or artificial intelligence-related industries. Given these risks and uncertainties, you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements.
For a discussion of other risks and uncertainties, as well as other important factors that could cause Eightco’s actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements contained herein, please refer to Eightco’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”), including risk factors and other disclosures in its Annual Report (Form 10-K) filed with the SEC on April 15, 2025 and subsequent publicly available filings with the SEC. All information contained in this press release is as of the date of its publication, and Eightco undertakes no obligation to update this information or to publicly announce the results of any revision of such statements to reflect future events or developments, except as required by law.
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