Key Highlights:
- Forward Industries holds 7M SOL — more than its next three competitors combined
- It has sent acquisition bids to Solmate, SkyAI, and Solana Company — all rejected or ignored so far
- All six active SOL treasury firms are trading below the value of their actual holdings
- SOL was bought by most of these firms above $200 — it's now trading around $76
- Forward's pitch: join us or face a messy liquidation where you don't even get your tokens back
The Solana digital asset treasury (DAT) sector is in trouble. Most of the firms that formed to hold SOL on behalf of investors bought in above $200. The token is now trading around $76. That math doesn't work, and Forward Industries knows it.
What Forward is doing
Forward Industries (NASDAQ: FWDI) is the largest SOL treasury firm by a wide margin — it holds over 7 million SOL, most of it staked or deployed in Solana DeFi. Now it's moving to absorb the competition before the bear market does it for them.
This week, Forward sent non-binding acquisition proposals to two rivals: Solana Company (the second-largest SOL DAT, with about 2.3 million tokens) and SkyAI (roughly 2 million tokens). Both offers were all-stock deals. Forward offered Solana Company shareholders a 10% premium, and SkyAI shareholders a 20% premium. Solana Company declined. SkyAI didn't respond. Forward had also bid for a firm called Solmate last week — that offer was rejected too.
Why smaller firms are in a tough spot
All six active SOL treasury firms tracked by The Block are currently trading at a discount to their net asset value — meaning the market thinks these companies are worth less than the coins they actually hold. The discount ranges from 24% to 66% below NAV.
Forward's CIO Ryan Navi put the situation bluntly: if a smaller SOL DAT winds down, it would likely be forced into a cash-only distribution. That means investors who contributed SOL tokens to a collective treasury strategy might not even get those tokens back — they'd receive cash at whatever the liquidation price turns out to be.
Forward's pitch is essentially: take the all-stock deal, get a premium, and become part of a larger and more stable company instead of going through that process.
What Forward is doing to stay afloat itself
Forward isn't just sitting on its SOL. It's borrowing against its liquid staked SOL through a deal with Galaxy Digital and deploying that freed-up capital into what it calls "non-correlated, high-yield opportunities" — including an investment in a reinsurance platform called OnRe.
The firm is also set to join the Russell 2000 and 3000 indexes at the end of June, which will bring in a wave of passive buying from index funds and significantly improve liquidity for FWDI shares. That index inclusion likely makes its acquisition currency — FWDI stock — more attractive to potential targets.
On Monday, FWDI shares were up over 14% to $4.92. HSDT and SKYA were both up around 12% on the news of the bids.
