$8.2M company with stock down 99.8% to invest $500M in crypto. What could possibly go wrong?

Nasdaq-traded company from Austin, Texas, Interactive Strength, made headlines by betting big on AI tokens. It announced setting up a crypto treasury and investing $500 million in Fetch AI token (FET). The problem is that the company is far from being well, the token is far from its winter peak, and the $500 million claim is questionable.

New huge corporate treasury?

More and more public companies are following MicroStrategy’s and Metaplanet’s suit and allocating millions of dollars in cryptocurrency. While most of them view Bitcoin as a viable strategy, a rare few enterprises prefer to dominate the altcoin niche.

Interactive Strength, a manufacturer of fancy fitness equipment under the CLMBR and FORME brands, announced on June 11, 2025, that it has entered into a Securities Purchase Agreement to raise $500 million to be spent exclusively on $FET tokens, released by Fetch.ai. The sponsors are the private equity firm ATW Partners and DWF Labs, a crypto market maker and web3 investor company. Allegedly, they already delivered $55 million. 

The move will make Interactive Strength a public company with the largest AI token treasury in the world. The CEO of Interactive Strength, Trent Ward, says: 

“Fetch.ai is the market leader at the intersection of the two most important technology trends today: artificial intelligence and crypto. We believe our strategy to acquire a significant number of $FET tokens could dramatically accelerate our mission to create significant long-term value for TRNR shareholders.”

Fetch AI is a semi-decentralized ecosystem for deploying AI agents. It was founded in the UK in 2019. Fetch’s LLM is designed to work across various industries and execute real-world tasks, such as finding a parking lot or booking goods, in addition to providing answers to requests like other AI agents. Together with Fetch, Interactive Strength will collaborate on creating an AI-based platform for personal training programs. The FET mainnet is built on the Cosmos blockchain.

Crypto treasury announcement finds Interactive Strength amidst two pending acquisitions. The company is going to acquire Sportstech and Wattbike. The crypto treasury will be managed via BitGo. The news has been met extremely positively on crypto Twitter, although the FET token’s rally was too short.

Interactive Strength’s stock TRNR is down

Despite the narrative surrounding the pending acquisition of two other companies and the pioneering of AI token treasuries, Interactive Strength faces financial challenges that contrast with the company’s image as a champion.  

Interactive Strength’s stock, TRNR, hit the market in 2023. The price has been extremely volatile in April and May. It was going from $26,000 to $13,000 and back within mere weeks. However, after peaking at over $28,300 on May 15, 2023, the stock price began to go down. By the end of the year, it had reached around $3,000 and continued to decline in the following months. 

As of June 12, 2025, the TRNR price is fluctuating below $1 per stock. The Trading View chart displays the all-time TRNR price change as down 100%. The company’s market capitalization is $8.29 million, while its debt stands at $11.25 million. The reported total loss of Interactive Strength in 2024 amounted to over $34.85 million, which is not as bad as the $51.6 million loss in 2023.

Some believe that betting big on the crypto treasury is not an elaborate strategy but rather a desperate attempt by the company to pull itself out of the shifting sands. Only time tells if it’s true.

The FET token is down

While Fetch is a long-standing, evolving company, the FET token’s market performance in the last 12 months leaves little room for optimism. The price peaked in March 2024 at $3.47, and now it’s down 78%. The overall crypto rally that followed Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. election helped FET enjoy another hike in December 2024; however, the price is now fluctuating between 70 and 80 cents.

Even the news of the potential $500 million investment didn’t significantly change the situation. Investing in a token that has been in a downtrend for six consecutive months may seem a counterintuitive move. Fetch AI itself is trying to play it around on Twitter by saying “utility over speculation.”

A $500 million investment is not guaranteed

Steven Ehrlich of the Unchain podcast doubts that $500 million isn’t just smoke and mirrors. In his article, Ehrlich outlines a clause in the deal between the sponsors of the treasury and Interactive Strength that reveals the structure of the agreement is rather a $55,555,555 upfront investment and a possible $444 million extension, which is not guaranteed. 

Generally, we can’t state that a $55 million investment isn’t viable for Interactive Strength or Fetch AI. However, we should be aware that there is something under the hood of the bullish headlines about the Nasdaq-traded company investing $500 million to set up the largest AI treasury in the world. As of press time, the news about the treasury had not dramatically changed the market performance of FET and TRNR.