On October 12th, a treasury company closely bound to the Solana ecosystem, SkyAI (code SKYA), threw out a highly oppressive capital plan: it intends to initiate a cash tender offer at $3 per share, targeting up to 95% of issued common stock and warrants, involving approximately 46.4 million shares of common stock and about 20.7 million warrants, totaling around $201 million if fully executed, while simultaneously rejecting the previous acquisition proposal from Forward Industries. In the days surrounding this institutional-level offer, Circle had minted approximately 3.5 billion USDC on the Solana network over the past week, according to on-chain data platform SolanaFloor, with this dollar-priced token influx indicating a rapid warming of sentiments from the capital side. Although the two events currently have not been publicly proven to have a direct connection, they appeared almost concurrently on the timeline, with one end representing corporate capital actions pertaining to equity and control, while the other end represents liquidity infusion between the protocol layer and on-chain accounts. The signals they overlap convey that the Solana ecosystem is undergoing a resonance warming phase driven by both corporate capital and on-chain funding.
Rejecting the Acquisition Offer: SkyAI Establishing Itself
At the same time the on-chain funding was rapidly warming, SkyAI made a reverse equity move: the company publicly confirmed that it has rejected the acquisition proposal from Forward Industries. Specific pricing and terms were not disclosed, but the response was very assertive—rather than waiting for potential buyers, it directly announced its intention to initiate a tender offer in cash. According to the plan, SkyAI intends to acquire up to 95% of issued common stock and warrants at a price of $3 per share, covering approximately 46.4 million shares of common stock and about 20.7 million warrants, with the total maximum amount being around $201 million, part of which clearly comes from the company’s existing cash. This is a reverse narrative: while others want to buy you out, SkyAI chooses to buy itself back from the public market.
Rejecting the acquisition offer and simultaneously launching a voluntary cash offer essentially represents a choice regarding control and the discourse of valuation. As a treasury company bound to the Solana ecosystem, code SKYA represents not just a single stock but a complete set of capital allocation capabilities revolving around Solana. Granting acquisition rights to Forward Industries would mean allowing an external entity to rewrite the boundaries of these capabilities; whereas using its own cash to launch the offer indicates that the management is expressing a judgment through action: there is a misalignment between the current market pricing and its strategic position in the Solana ecosystem, and they prefer to lock this portion of value back into their hands by increasing their shareholding and control. For observers, this decision repositions SkyAI’s role from an "acquirable asset" to a "proactive ecological treasury shaping capital structure," shifting the expectations surrounding SKYA from speculation on acquisition premiums to ongoing tracking of its independence and whether it can realize its central position within Solana capital.
$201 Million Cash Offer: A Power Struggle
The offer price of $3 per share seems like a simple number, yet behind it lies a comprehensive structure design to secure control through cash. According to disclosures from a single source, this offer covers about 46.4 million shares of common stock and approximately 20.7 million warrants, with a maximum total acquisition amount of around $201 million, aiming to seize up to 95% of the issued common stock and warrants. In other words, SkyAI is not symbolically increasing its stake in the market, but rather attempting to compact the majority of equity and future potential issuance space (warrants) into a single capital control table, significantly compressing the room for dispersed shareholders and external acquirers to operate.
Under this structure, $3 is not only a signal of the expected current share price, but also a collective "lie detector" test for different types of shareholders: shareholders willing to accept this pricing are choosing short-term cashing out and exit games; shareholders rejecting the offer are betting on SkyAI maintaining independence and continuing to amplify its valuation within the Solana ecosystem. This transforms what was a linear confrontation around the acquisition proposal from Forward Industries into a multi-faceted game among internal shareholders and management: launching a $201 million cash tender offer as leverage, management invites the market to "keep the company within its own camp," yet did not provide a complete breakdown of the source of funds, the offer's timeframe, or the regulatory approval process in the briefing. By only mentioning "existing cash and..." as one source of funding, it implies that the execution of the offer may still rely on subsequent financing or arrangements, making shareholders assess “whether the offer can truly be executed” as a key risk point rather than treating it as a foregone conclusion. Whether the tender offer ultimately translates into a real restructuring of control depends on the realization of funding and shareholder responses—variables that have yet to be validated.
3.5 Billion USDC Minted in 7 Days: Volume on Solana
In contrast to shareholders deliberating whether the tender offer funds are genuinely in place, the rhythm of on-chain funding has provided another set of numbers: according to on-chain data platforms like SolanaFloor, over the past 7 days, Circle, as the issuer of USDC, has cumulatively minted approximately 3.5 billion USDC on the Solana network. Averaging it out, this amounts to about 500 million units of new supply daily; measured by a single chain and single asset, this is no longer piecemeal replenishment but rather a rhythmical volume expansion behavior, showing that short-term demand for USDC on Solana has been concentrated and responded to.
From the perspective of pure funding structure, large-scale minting primarily indicates that this portion of USDC has been technically "prepared" to enter various transaction and allocation scenarios on-chain: market-making positions can expand more easily, and if off-chain funds choose to enter through Circle, the operational space on Solana would subsequently be opened after crossing the minting step. Regardless of subjective intentions or passive follow-ups, the outcome of holders voting with their feet is that this chain has welcomed a significant increment of usable funds over the past week, raising both the available liquidity and potential transaction capacity.
However, the critical gap is that we currently only see "how much has been minted," but do not see "who specifically received it": the briefing did not provide the receiving addresses of these USDC, transaction hashes, or downstream application scenarios, nor did it present any data that could break down into agency positions, retail entries, strategic funding, or short-term arbitrage inventories. Under this information framework, any inferences about "this $3.5 billion being tailored for a specific event or particular institution" exceed the boundaries of existing evidence and can only be viewed as conjecture rather than fact.
Therefore, this round of USDC minting on Solana is more reliably interpreted as a raw observation of on-chain funding activity and potential liquidity expansion, rather than directly equating it to an already-established capital layout, particularly needing to maintain restraint in interpreting data without mastering the particulars of fund flows and usage.
Capital Markets and On-Chain Funds: Dual Acceleration of Solana
On the same timeline that requires restrained interpretation of on-chain funding data, SkyAI's capital decision brings another layer of "acceleration" to the forefront. On October 12th, this treasury company bound to the Solana ecosystem with stock code SKYA announced plans to initiate a cash tender offer to acquire up to 95% of the issued common stock and warrants at $3 per share, covering approximately 46.4 million shares of common stock and around 20.7 million warrants, with the maximum total amount being about $201 million, while clearly rejecting the previous acquisition proposal from Forward Industries. For a treasury company deeply tied to a specific chain ecosystem, such a high proportion of an offer, using its own cash as one source of funding, conveys a strong sense of corporate confidence concerning its relationship with Solana: it hopes to regain control over equity structure and resource allocation rather than surrender control to external acquirers.
Framing this offer alongside the minting of approximately 3.5 billion USDC over 7 days on-chain forms a typical narrative of "corporate confidence + ecological expansion": on one end, the treasury company is using capital in the range of $201 million in the traditional capital market to reinforce its binding with Solana, while on the other end, Circle continues to expand volume on the Solana network, laying a thicker liquidity foundation for potential large settlements and capital operations. For institutional funds, this combination of concentrated restructuring on the equity side and significant incremental on-chain funding often increases their willingness to view Solana as a candidate platform capable of carrying more complex capital arrangements and larger scales of fund flows. However, research briefs have already made it clear to list "whether there is a direct connection between the two events" as missing information, with no current evidence supporting the view that USDC minting is a complementary action to the SkyAI offer, or conversely inferring that the tender offer is customized for on-chain incremental funding. Therefore, a more prudent judgment is that these are merely two significant signals that coincide in time, whether they will actually converge on the capital level and on-chain funding level remains to be verified by subsequent public information.
Opportunities and Uncertainties: What to Look for Next
SkyAI's $201 million tender offer and Circle's minting of approximately 3.5 billion USDC on Solana push the "treasury company + on-chain funds" narrative into the same time window: the former is about reclaiming a capital platform bound to Solana, potentially increasing governance and resource allocation concentration, paving the way for introducing more institutional funds and establishing more complex capital structures; the latter involves directly injecting liquidity on-chain, providing a greater pool of resources for market making, leverage, payments, and cross-platform capital flows. In the medium term, if the two ultimately produce a correspondence in funding use and asset allocation, the funding landscape of the Solana ecosystem may shift from "single project financing" to a new phase of "treasury coordination + on-chain liquidity collaboration." However, key information remains missing: specifics regarding the funding sources for the SkyAI offer, detailed terms of the Forward proposal, the timeline for executing the offer, and the applications and protocols in which this batch of USDC ultimately settles have not been disclosed; therefore, research can only remain at the level of existing disclosures and the broad, visible on-chain flows. Moving forward, continuous tracking is needed along three main lines: first, the progress of the offer and changes in the equity structure to see if institutional capital truly locks in control of SkyAI; second, the direction and retention time of USDC on Solana to determine whether the incremental funding represents short-term trading chips or is incorporated into long-term strategic positions; third, the pathways of fund utilization at the treasury level to assess whether SkyAI integrates its capital operations with financing and incentives for projects and infrastructure within the Solana ecosystem. Whether these three clues can converge within the next year will determine whether current sets of parallel signals are merely one-off events or the starting point for the evolution of Solana's capital structure.
Join our community to discuss and get stronger together!
AiCoin exclusive Hyperliquid benefits: https://app.hyperliquid.xyz/join/AICOIN88
AiCoin exclusive Aster benefits: https://www.asterdex.com/zh-CN/referral/9C50e2
On-chain Telegram community: https://t.me/AiCoinWhaleData
On-chain community: https://www.aicoin.com/link/chat?cid=N6OVMor5g
AiCoin on-chain Twitter: https://x.com/aicoinwhaledata
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
