Telegram raises $1.7B in bond sales to repay debt and fund operations, with most proceeds going to existing bondholders and a 9% coupon offered.
A recent bond offering that closed on May 28 raised $1.7 billion from investors and featured a 9% coupon.
Telegram, a messaging platform, was the company behind the offering.
As reported by Bloomberg, the company will allocate a portion of the proceeds to settle $955 million in debt from a previous bond issue scheduled to mature in 2026.
The remaining $745 million is new capital that will be used to cover operational costs and growth.
In a post on the messaging platform, Pavel Durov, the co-founder of Telegram, stated:
“The response from investors was phenomenal. We are deeply grateful to the investment funds that have supported us over the years. Due to strong demand, we expanded the offering beyond the initial $1.5 billion — yet demand still far exceeded what we could allocate.”
As the messaging platform expands its global reach and features, the crypto-friendly messaging company continues to garner investor interest.
The platform is utilized extensively within the crypto community and is perceived as a means of promoting mainstream adoption.
The purchase of Telegram shares in a prospective initial public offering (IPO) at a 20% discount is available to investors who participated in the sale, including asset manager BlackRock and Abu Dhabi investment firm Mubadala.
Tentative Agreement Between Telegram, Musk’s xAI
The bond sale results from recent developments at Telegram, such as a partnership between the messaging company and xAI, the artificial intelligence firm that developed Grok, which Elon Musk owns.
Durov wrote in a May 28 X post that Telegram and xAI reportedly agreed to grant Grok users access for a year. xAI will provide the company with $300 million in cash and equity and “50% of the revenue from xAI subscriptions sold via the messaging platform.”.
Subsequently, Musk refuted the existence of a contract between the two organizations.
Durov’s response indicates that the deal’s preliminaries are “pending.”
On May 28, Toncoin, the sole digital asset that Telegram accepts for app services, experienced a 20% increase to $3.69 in response to the partnership announcement.
