Brera rebrands as Solmate with $300M Solana treasury PIPE

Nasdaq-listed Brera Holdings is rebranding as Solmate after raising $300 million in an oversubscribed private investment in public equity (PIPE) to launch a Solana-focused digital asset treasury and infrastructure company.

The deal was backed by United Arab Emirates–based Pulsar Group, ARK Invest, RockawayX and the Solana Foundation, according to a Thursday announcement.

Brera, a sports ownership group with football clubs in Italy and across Europe, said Solmate will shift its core focus to a Solana-based digital asset treasury (DAT) and infrastructure business, accumulating and staking Solana (SOL) while also building validator operations in Abu Dhabi.

Marco Santori, a partner at Pantera Capital and former chief legal officer at Kraken, will lead the company, with economist Arthur Laffer and RockawayX CEO Viktor Fischer joining the board alongside two seats reserved for the Solana Foundation.

A PIPE, the financing method used by Solmate, is when a publicly traded company raises money by selling shares directly to private investors, usually at a discount.

Solmate plans to set up bare-metal servers in Abu Dhabi to run a Solana validator as part of its push to expand blockchain infrastructure in the United Arab Emirates, and it expects to pursue a dual listing on a UAE exchange alongside its Nasdaq presence. 

“Our stakeholders have deep, long-term conviction in the Solana ecosystem and will demand that we accumulate SOL through bull and bear markets alike,” said CEO Marco Santori.

According to Solmate, its ready-executed letter of intent with the Solana Foundation gives it discounted access to SOL.

Related: Solana DATs, TradFi adoption convince traders that $300 SOL is possible

Solana Strategic reserves are rising

Institutional interest in Solana continues to climb, with 16 tracked entities now holding a combined 15.83 million SOL, equal to about 2.75% of the token’s total supply.

Of that amount, 9.35 million SOL is actively staked, accounting for 1.63% of supply and generating an average yield of 7.7%, according to data from Strategysolanareserve.org.

Leading the pack is Forward Industries, holding 6.82 million SOL worth about $1.63 billion at current prices, followed by Sharps Technology with 2.14 million SOL and DeFi Development Corp with 2.10 million SOL.

The wave of corporate accumulation shows no sign of slowing, as additional companies continue to reveal major Solana holdings.

On Monday, Galaxy Digital disclosed purchases of 6.5 million SOL worth about $1.55 billion over five days, including $306 million in a single day. The company also joined Multicoin Capital and Jump Crypto in a $1.65 billion private placement for Forward Industries, though it didn’t confirm if its SOL acquisitions are directly tied to that deal.

On the same day, Nasdaq-listed Helius Medical Technologies announced a $500 million private placement to build a Solana-focused corporate treasury, led by Pantera Capital and Summer Capital, with plans to scale SOL holdings over the next two years while exploring staking and lending opportunities.

The growing interest in Solana as a treasury asset comes as SOL’s price has been rising. At the time of writing, it was trading around $249 — up 38.7% over the past 30 days and nearly 10% on the week, though it is still down around 15% from its all-time high of $293.31 on Jan. 19, 2025, according to CoinGecko

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