The TON Foundation has raised more than $400 million through the sale of tokens. The fundraising involved prominent venture capital firms in the sector, including Sequoia Capital, Ribbit, Paradigm, Benchmark, and Kingsway.
Karatage, Hypersphere Ventures, CoinFund, Draper Associates, Libertus Capital, Vy Capital, and SkyBridge Capital were among the other notable investors.
Telegram’s Influence on the Success of TON
TON’s success is largely driven by its exclusive partnership with Telegram Messenger, one of the world’s largest communication platforms, with over 1 billion monthly active users as of March 2025.
The partnership positions TON as the backbone of its Web3 ambitions, which include using Toncoin for payments within Telegram’s ecosystem and integrating TON as the exclusive blockchain for its Mini App system.
Over the past year, the integration of TON has increased its active accounts from 4 million to over 41 million. Furthermore, the number of Toncoin holders has surpassed that of Bitcoin wallet holders, with approximately 121 million globally.
Distribution of Funds
The funds will go to three major areas: user acquisition, developer incentives, and product development.
TON will leverage Telegram’s vast user base to onboard millions more into the TON ecosystem. It will also offer grants and technical support to incentivize developers to build decentralized applications (dApps) on TON.
Lastly, it plans to expand Toncoin’s applications within Telegram and beyond for payments, decentralized finance (DeFi), and tokenizing digital assets. Telegram plans to tokenize digital stickers and emojis, which will be non-fungible tokens (NFTs), exclusively on the TON blockchain.
The funding supports TON’s aspirations to involve over 450 million users of Telegram’s active user base—about 30% of the total—by 2028. Furthermore, Bloomberg analysts estimate a 70% probability that a spot ETF for Toncoin might be approved by October 2025. This would enable institutional investors to access Toncoin through traditional financial markets.
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