Many people are paying attention to the new developments of Brett Harrison, the former President of FTX US. This industry veteran, who left the company months before the collapse, has a new venture called Architect Financial Technologies, which has made significant progress—on December 23rd, it completed a $35 million Series A funding round, with a valuation soaring to $187 million.

This round was led by miax and Tioga Capital, with a lineup of prestigious investors including ARK Invest, Galaxy Ventures, VanEck, Coinbase Ventures, and CMT Digital. Honestly, the scale of this funding and the caliber of investors reflect the market's interest in this direction.

So, what exactly is Architect doing? Its product is called AX, a perpetual contract exchange focused on traditional assets. It’s not the typical crypto approach but targets assets in traditional financial markets such as forex, interest rates, and metals. From another perspective, this is akin to bringing Web3 trading innovations into traditional financial instruments—an interesting angle indeed.

It’s worth noting that as early as February 2024, Architect had already completed funding. Since then, the funding progress has significantly accelerated, indicating that both the team’s execution capability and investor confidence are on the rise.