Hyperliquid's founder once turned down a $1 billion valuation funding proposal, sticking to a "Zero External Investment" approach.

BlockBeats News, April 13th. According to Colossus, Jeffrey Yan, the founder of Hyperliquid, received an investment intention based on a valuation of around $1 billion and a scale of about $100 million when the project had been online for less than a year. However, after careful consideration, he ultimately chose to reject the investment offer.

The report indicates that before and after the investment proposal, the team had been consistently "self-funding" to maintain operations, with the founder personally covering project costs each month. During the investor outreach, Jeff had discussions with multiple entrepreneurs and VCs about the nature and significance of fundraising but was never convinced that "external capital could enhance its intrinsic value."

Ultimately, he explicitly informed the team on Monday of rejecting the financing arrangement. According to insiders, members responsible for managing the funds were shocked by this decision as they had undertaken various preparations for the fundraising efforts. Jeff's main reason was that Hyperliquid is not a traditional company but a blockchain protocol that needs to maintain neutrality. He believed that introducing external equity capital could potentially compromise the protocol's "permissionless, neutral" positioning, conflicting with its long-term design goals.

He previously stated that if Bitcoin had accepted VC funding early on, its "neutrality narrative" might have been weakened. Following the same logic, he chose to continue maintaining Hyperliquid's structure without investors and supported some operational expenses long-term with personal funds. On January 28, 2024, he summarized the project's principles on social media:

· No investors
· No paid market makers
· No fees to the development team (or the development team does not charge fees)
· No insiders (or privileged insiders)

This statement is also seen as a core tenet of Hyperliquid's "extremely decentralized/decapitalized" approach.