DeFi Development Corp. closes $11M preferred stock sale to fund Solana buys
VC & Fundraising ·
Nasdaq-listed DeFi Development Corp. finished a public offering of a new preferred security called CHAD, pulling in roughly $11 million in gross proceeds that it plans to funnel almost entirely into buying SOL.
The company describes CHAD as the first digital-credit instrument backed by Solana, extending a financing category that until now had centered on bitcoin, according to globenewswire.com. The shares priced at $8.00 each against a $10.00 stated value, carrying an initial annual dividend of 13.0%, which works out to an effective yield near 16.25% at the offering price. Dividends accrue daily and can be reset later under the security's terms. Thomas Lee, Fundstrat's co-founder and head of research, took part in the raise alongside other investors, and R.F. Lafferty & Co. ran the offering as sole book-runner. The stock now trades on Nasdaq under the ticker CHAD.
Because CHAD is structured as non-convertible preferred equity, its sale does not add to DeFi Development's common share count. Management says that distinction matters: once the proceeds are converted into SOL, the company expects its Solana-per-share figure — the metric it treats as its central performance gauge — to rise without diluting existing shareholders. Executives frame the instrument as a repeatable funding channel that could let the firm keep expanding its SOL holdings over time, separate from issuing more stock. The Block likewise reported the closing as a Strategy-style move to build out the company's treasury position in Solana.
The company positions the deal within a broader argument that Solana, unlike bitcoin, generates native staking rewards, and that its own validator infrastructure and treasury operations can add to that yield. That productive-asset framing underpins the pitch for CHAD as a credit product distinct from earlier bitcoin-linked offerings.
Coverage of the transaction — spanning four separate outlets — has focused on the same core figures: the roughly $11 million raised, the 13% dividend rate and the plan to route net proceeds into additional SOL. What remains unclear is how quickly the company will scale CHAD beyond this inaugural round, whether the instrument can be sustained "around par" as management hopes, and how the added preferred-dividend obligation will weigh on the company's finances as it continues accumulating Solana.