Finance company Mill City set to secure $450 million to kickstart Sui treasury strategy

Key Takeaways

Mill City is raising $450 million in a private placement to acquire SUI as its primary treasury reserve asset.
Key investors include Karatage Opportunities, Sui Foundation, Galaxy Digital, and Pantera Capital.

Mill City Ventures III, a US finance firm serving high-net-worth individuals and small-cap companies, said Monday it has secured investor commitments totaling $450 million to fund its Sui-centric crypto treasury strategy.

Institutions and traditional participants may soon have Nasdaq-listed access to this Sui treasury company, as early as this Thursday. https://t.co/hpJdxQ7sO6

— Sui 「🦑」 (@SuiNetwork) July 28, 2025

The private investment was led by Karatage Opportunities, a London-based hedge fund focused on digital assets, and the Sui Foundation, which oversees the development and adoption of the Sui blockchain.

Other participants include Galaxy Digital, Pantera Capital, Electric Capital, GSR, Protagonist, Arrington Capital, dao5, and more. Galaxy Asset Management will manage the crypto treasury.

Upon closing, expected around July 31, 2025, Mill City plans to allocate approximately 98% of net proceeds to acquire SUI, the native token of the Sui blockchain.

The company will purchase tokens via a combination of open market activity, institutional deal flow, and a negotiated agreement with the Sui Foundation. The remaining 2% of funds will support its legacy short-term lending business.

Discussing the move, Stephen Mackintosh, the proposed Chief Investment Officer of Mill City and General Partner at Karatage, said it comes at a pivotal time as institutional interest in crypto and the rise of artificial intelligence converge. The Sui blockchain offers the performance and infrastructure needed to meet the demands of both sectors.

“We believe that Sui is well-positioned for mass adoption with the speed and efficiency institutions require for crypto at scale, plus the technical architecture capable of supporting AI workloads while maintaining security and decentralization,” Mackintosh stated.

Christian Thompson, Managing Director at the Sui Foundation, expressed confidence that the Sui blockchain was designed to deliver the scalability, speed, and security required to power the next generation of decentralized applications and real-world crypto use cases.

As part of the transition, Marius Barnett, also a co-founder of Karatage, will take over as Chairman of the Board, while Dana Wagner, a current board member at Coinbase Custody and former general counsel at Square, will join as an independent director.

“The future belongs to crypto, AI, and stablecoins — and they all need infrastructure that can handle real scale. That’s Sui,” said Adeniyi Abiodun, co-founder and product chief of Mysten Labs. “We believe that everything has been leading up to the right time to make Sui’s founding vision a reality — and in our view, the moment is now.”

Mill City’s new strategy builds on a growing trend of public companies experimenting with crypto-native treasury models, following the path of Bitcoin-treasury firms like Strategy or MARA Holdings.

Besides Mill City, other companies hold SUI on their balance sheets, including DeFi Technologies and Lion Group Holdings. DeFi Technologies holds SUI as its second-largest digital asset in its corporate treasury. The company actively monetizes its SUI holdings through asset management, trading, and staking activities.

Meanwhile, Nasdaq-listed Lion Group Holding expanded its crypto treasury to $9.6 million by acquiring over 1 million SUI tokens alongside other major tokens such as SOL and HYPE.