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Mill City Ventures Successfully Closes $450 Million Private Placement, Commences SUI Treasury Strategy

via Business Wire

Company now the first publicly-traded SUI treasury with Sui Foundation backing

Deployment of capital begins immediately with industry-first relationship providing institutional-grade access to blockchain built for mass adoption

Karatage co-founders Marius Barnett and Stephen Mackintosh become Chairman of the Board and Chief Investment Officer, respectively

Mill City Ventures III, Ltd. ("Mill City" or the "Company") (NASDAQ: MCVT) today announced the successful closing of its $450,000,000 private investment in public equity and has commenced implementation of its industry-first Sui blockchain treasury strategy.

Karatage Opportunities (“Karatage”), the London-based proprietary hedge fund specializing in digital assets and emerging technology investments, founded by Marius Barnett and Stephen Mackintosh, acted as the lead investor, with an equivalent investment from the Sui Foundation, an independent organization dedicated to the advancement and adoption of the Sui network. Barnett has now been appointed as Chairman of the Board, and Mackintosh now serves as its Chief Investment Officer.

Investors included prominent firms and infrastructure providers Big Brain Holdings, Galaxy Digital Inc (Nasdaq: GLXY) and Dr Jack Kong – NLABS Fund. Other notable investors included Pantera Capital, ATW Partners, M2, Electric Capital, GSR, Selini, Protagonist, ParaFi Capital, Borderless, dao5, Arrington Capital, Comma3 Ventures, FalconX, Paper Ventures, Maven 11, and LVNA Capital, among others. Galaxy Asset Management will serve as the Asset Manager.

A.G.P./Alliance Global Partners acted as the sole placement agent in connection with the offering.

Mill City now has a total of 76,271,187 SUI in its treasury, acquired at an average price of $3.6389 per token after having made its first purchases through an OTC purchase and sale agreement with the Sui Foundation and contributions in kind. Retail and institutional traders now have access to the Company’s treasury via a publicly-traded wrapper with daily liquidity. Mill City intends to continue its SUI accumulation strategy by purchasing additional tokens on the open market. By working with the Sui Foundation, Mill City is the only crypto treasury strategy with official foundation backing on the market today.

Sui is one of the only blockchains built for mass adoption, designed to provide scalability, speed, and security to support the next generation of decentralized applications and real-world crypto use-cases for consumers and institutions alike — from stablecoins to artificial intelligence to gaming to finance. Mill City's treasury strategy positions investors to benefit from this technological advantage at a pivotal moment when institutional crypto adoption is currently accelerating.

"Not all crypto treasury strategies are created equal, and we believe that Mill City Ventures is building something truly different with Sui," said Stephen Mackintosh, newly appointed Chief Investment Officer of Mill City. “Our differentiated treasury strategy supporting this innovative blockchain is made possible through access to institutional-grade deal flow and an aligned vision with the Sui Foundation. Our Sui strategy is about more than passively holding tokens; it’s about actively partnering with the ecosystem to maximize long-term value creation."

“Mill City is breaking new ground by offering public market investors a clean, liquid, and institutional-grade way to access the broader digital asset ecosystem. Anchoring its treasury to SUI, and pairing that with seasoned leadership, creates a powerful structure for long-term growth and exposure to one of the most promising blockchain platforms out there,” added Mike Novogratz, Founder and CEO of Galaxy. “Galaxy is proud to support this innovative model as it opens the door for traditional capital to participate in crypto’s next chapter.”

Led by visionary former Meta technologists who Mark Zuckerberg charged with developing the company's Diem stablecoin project, Sui has attracted serious developers building breakthrough applications across finance, gaming, and AI, while major financial institutions have begun creating regulated investment products around the network.

"We see Mill City’s treasury strategy — and the wave of institutional backing that it has ushered in — as major validation that Sui's object-centric architecture and Move programming language represent the future of blockchain infrastructure," said Adeniyi Abiodun, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Mysten Labs, the original contributors to Sui.

Mill City will continue providing short-term lending and structured finance solutions. It will additionally dedicate approximately 98% of the private placement net proceeds to SUI acquisition and treasury management. Mill City expects to provide regular updates on its SUI holdings and treasury performance as it looks to build the largest institutionally-managed SUI position in the public markets.

Advisors

Sullivan & Worcester LLP acted as legal advisor to A.G.P./Alliance Global Partners.

Loeb & Loeb LLP acted as legal advisor to Mill City.

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP acted as legal advisor to Karatage.

O’Melveny & Myers LLP acted as legal advisor to Sui Foundation.

About Mill City Ventures III, Ltd.

Mill City Ventures III, Ltd. is the sole publicly-traded company with an official Sui Foundation relationship, providing institutional-grade exposure to the Sui blockchain. The Company continues its specialty finance operations while serving as a SUI treasury vehicle. For more information about Mill City, please visit www.millcityventures3.com.

About Karatage Opportunities

Karatage is a London-based proprietary hedge fund specializing in emerging technology investments across digital assets, artificial intelligence, and gaming. Founded by Marius Barnett and Stephen Mackintosh, Karatage focuses on identifying and backing high-growth projects building next-generation technology with mass-market appeal. As a significant early investor in the Sui ecosystem, the Karatage team brings deep operational experience across the blockchain ecosystem. For more information about Karatage, please visit karatage.io.

About Sui

Sui is a first-of-its-kind Layer 1 blockchain and smart contract platform designed from the ground up to make digital asset ownership fast, private, secure, and accessible to everyone. Its object-centric model, based on the Move programming language, enables parallel execution, sub-second finality, and rich on-chain assets. With horizontally scalable processing and storage, Sui supports a wide range of applications with unrivaled speed at low cost. Sui is a step-function advancement in blockchain and a platform on which creators and developers can build amazing user-friendly experiences.

Forward-Looking Statement

Statements in this press release about future expectations, plans and prospects, as well as any other statements regarding matters that are not historical facts, may constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and these forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the anticipated closing of the Offering, the anticipated receipt of proceeds from the Offering, the Company’s anticipated use of the proceeds from the Offering, opportunities that the Offering will create, Sui’s capabilities as a blockchain and the opportunities Sui creates, the belief that the new Board members will provide strong and experienced leadership to the Company, the execution of the Company’s treasury strategy, the anticipated filing of a registration statement and the Company’s ability to cause it to be effective and maintain its effectiveness, and other statements that are not historical facts, including statements which may be accompanied by the words “intends,” “may,” “will,” “plans,” “expects,” “anticipates,” “projects,” “predicts,” “estimates,” “aims,” “believes,” “hopes,” “potential” or similar words. Actual results could differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements due to certain factors, including without limitation, the Company’s satisfaction of closing conditions for the offering, fluctuations in the market price of SUI and any associated impairment charges that the Company may incur as a result of a decrease in the market price of SUI below the value at which the Company’s SUI are carried on its balance sheet, changes in the accounting treatment relating to the Company’s SUI holdings, the Company’s ability to achieve profitable operations, government regulation of cryptocurrencies and online betting, changes in securities laws or regulations, customer acceptance of new products and services including our SUI treasury strategy, the risk that SUI is classified as a security under current or future regulatory frameworks and the risk that the Company is deemed an investment company as a result of its ownership of SUI, the demand for its products and its customers’ economic condition, the impact of competitive products and pricing, the lengthy sales cycle, proprietary rights of the Company, changes in applicable laws or regulations, and its competitors, general economic conditions and other risk factors detailed in the Company’s annual report and other filings with the SEC. Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date hereof, and the Company does not undertake any responsibility to update the forward-looking statements in this press release.

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