AI Financial, formerly known as Alt5 Sigma, wants the market to know that it is more than just its token holdings and calling it a WLFI tax company is not the right way to describe it.
“AiFi continues to operate an active fintech and digital payments business while executing a broader long-term strategy across digital assets, settlement infrastructure, tokenization and next-generation financial technologies,” a company spokesperson told CoinDesk in an email. “Characterizing the company solely as a ‘treasury company’ does not accurately reflect the breadth of AiFi’s operating business.”
AI Financial operates ALT5 Pay, its crypto payment platform, and ALT5 Prime, its over-the-counter digital asset trading business. Since the end of the quarter, it has also announced the acquisition of tokenization and ICO infrastructure firm Block Street, signed a commercial agreement with SuperQ Quantum, and outlined a broader expansion into digital financial infrastructure.
The response from the spokesperson comes after AI Financial’s latest SEC filing painted a very different picture of its current financial profile.
The Nasdaq-listed company disclosed in that filing that it held 7.28 billion WLFI tokens worth $706.4 million at the end of March, down from an acquisition fee of around $1.46 billion. By comparison, its operating fintech business generated just $4.7 million in quarterly revenue.
AI Financial also warned in that filing that recurring losses and a $5.5 million deficit on working capital raise “substantial doubt” about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern within a year of the publication of its financial statements.
To further complicate the picture, the company’s WLFI holdings remain contractually locked in, limiting its ability to convert its largest asset into cash. AI Financial ended the quarter with just $10.5 million in cash.
AI Financial’s relationship with WLFI goes far beyond ownership. World Liberty CEO Zach Witkoff serves as the company’s chairman. Co-founder Zachary Folkman serves on the board; WLFI has loaned it $15 million, secured by WLFI tokens, and WLFI has rights equal to about 46% of its fully diluted equity.
But the question is, can investors look past WLFI when looking at AI Financial as a whole?
AI Financial may be building a broader fintech and digital infrastructure platform, but its SEC filing suggests WLFI remains the asset that defines its financial story.
Unlike a typical digital asset treasury company that holds bitcoin or another liquid asset, AI Financial’s relationship with WLFI is more complex: The issuer of its central treasury asset also has deep governance, lending and equity ties to the company itself.
