Together with Avery Ching, he co-founded Aptos in 2021.
It’s been a wild ride for Shaikh and Aptos. Within three months of leaving Meta in December 2021 and founding the startup, it raised $200 million at a valuation of over $1 billion, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Just three months after that, it raised another $150 million. But the wild ride had some bumps: Its investors included the ill-fated FTX.
In the interim the company has continued to grow while also weathering many of the same problems other crypto companies have faced. In April, it launched Aptos Ascend, a full stack of financial features.