Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said his business relationship with President Donald Trump’s family has been “misconstrued” in the wake of his pardon.

“There’s no business relationships whatsoever,” Zhao told CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin on Thursday in an interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The former Binance CEO served four months in prison after pleading guilty in 2023 to charges he enabled money laundering during his time leading the company. Zhao was released in September 2024.

Trump’s pardon in October 2025 drew attention to Binance’s ties to World Liberty Financial, a crypto company founded by the president’s family.

The connection stems from a $2 billion investment in March 2025 by state-owned firm MGX of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, into Binance. MGX paid using USD1, a stablecoin created by World Liberty Financial.

Zhao stepped down as Binance’s CEO in 2023 as part of the plea deal and $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice. He remains a major shareholder.

“MGX is the investor. They choose USD1,” Zhao told CNBC. “My request to them was they pay us in crypto. I don’t want to deal with banks, really.”

“Many people misconstrued that,” he added.

Zhao told CNBC the company has since converted that investment out of USD1 in portions over time.

“Stablecoin is just a currency for payment. Just because I accepted that, it doesn’t mean I invested in the issuer of that,” he said.

“As we have stated many times, WLFI is not a political organization and had zero role in the pardon process,” World Liberty Financial spokesperson David Wachsman said in a statement. “To imply otherwise is dangerous and false.”

The Wall Street Journal reported following the pardon that in addition to MGX’s investment using USD1, Binance also helped build the technology behind the stablecoin, citing sources familiar with the matter.

“A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything,” Trump said, when asked later why he issued the order. “And so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”

NBC News reported the week of Trump’s pardon that Binance had recently hired lobbyist Charles McDowell’s firm, Checkmate Government Relations. McDowell is a friend of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son.

Checkmate disclosed that it was paid $450,000 for work that included lobbying the White House and Treasury Department for “executive relief” and “financial services policy issues relating to digital assets and cryptocurrency.”

“There is a lot of media saying that there is some deal in place to get me the pardon,” Zhao told CNBC at Davos. “As far as I know, that does not exist at all.”

Zhao told CNBC at Davos that he has still not spoken directly with Trump.

“The closest that I got to him was today when he was doing the Board of Peace session,” Zhao said. “I was in the audience, about 30 to 40 feet away from him.”

In a CBS “60 Minutes” interview in November, Trump affirmed that he did not know Zhao.

“I have no idea who he is,” Trump said. “I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.”

— CNBC’s Jacqueline Corba contributed to this story.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Friday said Shengjia Zhao, the co-creator of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will serve as the chief scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs.

Zuckerberg has been on a multibillion-dollar artificial intelligence hiring blitz in recent weeks, highlighted by a $14 billion investment in Scale AI. In June, Zuckerberg announced a new organization called Meta Superintelligence Labs that’s made up of top AI researchers and engineers. 

Zhao’s name was listed among other new hires in the June memo, but Zuckerberg said Friday that Zhao co-founded the lab and “has been our lead scientist from day one.” Zhao will work directly with Zuckerberg and Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who is acting as Meta’s chief AI officer.

“Shengjia has already pioneered several breakthroughs including a new scaling paradigm and distinguished himself as a leader in the field,” Zuckerberg wrote in a social media post. “I’m looking forward to working closely with him to advance his scientific vision.”

In addition to co-creating ChatGPT, Zhao helped build OpenAI’s GPT-4, mini models, 4.1 and o3, and he previously led synthetic data at OpenAI, according to Zuckerberg’s June memo.

Meta Superintelligence Labs will be where employees work on foundation models such as the open-source Llama family of AI models, products and Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research projects.

The social media company will invest “hundreds of billions of dollars” into AI compute infrastructure, Zuckerberg said earlier this month.

“The next few years are going to be very exciting!” Zuckerberg wrote Friday.

WATCH: Meta announces massive ‘Prometheus’ & ‘Hyperion’ data center plans

Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire co-founder and former CEO of Binance, is expected to see his mammoth wealth remain intact and likely continue to climb even as he faces time behind bars after his sentencing in a Seattle court.

Zhao, who is commonly referred to as “CZ” in crypto circles, was sentenced to four months in prison on Tuesday, after pleading guilty to charges of enabling money laundering at his crypto exchange.

The sentence handed down to Zhao in Seattle federal court was significantly less than the three years that federal prosecutors had been seeking for him. The defense had asked for five months of probation. Sentencing guidelines called for a prison term of 12 to 18 months.

A Binance spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC the crypto exchange has made “considerable compliance enhancements,” including with regards to anti-money laundering detection and “hiring key compliance personnel.”

A lawyer for Zhao did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

In November, Zhao struck a deal with the U.S. government to resolve a multiyear investigation into Binance. As part of Binance’s $4.3 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, Zhao stepped down as the company’s CEO, and the exchange agreed to form a board of directors with independent members, as well as compliance and audit committees.

Of the seven total directors recently named to the since-formed board of directors, three were designated as being “independent” — and five of them, including all of the board’s independent members, submitted letters to the judge in Zhao’s criminal case asking for leniency in sentencing.

Gabriel Abed, the board’s chairman and one of its independent members, told U.S. District Judge Richard Jones that Zhao was “distinguished by a stoic composure and genuine humility” and that “despite his significant achievements,” he maintained a lifestyle marked by simplicity including dressing in clothes bought on Amazon, driving a Toyota and wearing an Apple watch.

Despite Zhao now facing time in prison, industry experts and lawyers who spoke with CNBC say his tremendous personal wealth will remain unaffected and, if anything, is likely to rise.

Los Angeles corporate law attorney Tre Lovell tells CNBC that the government is only entitled to any restitution or fines imposed and not to Zhao’s assets or wealth as a whole. Former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani agrees, adding that Zhao’s personal wealth won’t be affected by his sentence.

“Because Zhao and the government came to an agreement, the government didn’t get a judgment or restitution order against Zhao and do discovery into his assets,” said Rahmani. “He’ll have significant wealth when he is released from prison.”

Zhao has said previously he has personal investments in bitcoin and Binance’s own BNB token, however he’s not disclosed the value of those holdings. Binance Coin, or BNB, is up 83% so far this year to $576.

Lucas Kiely, chief investment officer of digital wealth platform Yield App, said that Zhao’s “significant stake in the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume positions him to potentially benefit from the overall growth of the crypto market.”

The recent approval of a spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund in the U.S. has led to renewed interest in the crypto market, and helped trigger a wave of fresh institutional investment, according to Kiely — and that’s sure to be a boon to Binance.

“Such developments could contribute to the growth of Binance and, by extension, CZ’s wealth,” he told CNBC.

Zhao has been hit with a partial knock to his overall fortune — he was forced to pay a $50 million fine, in addition to the $4.3 billion in fines and forfeiture Binance was ordered to pay for violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions on Iran. Yadav noted that it’s also possible Zhao makes some contribution to the billions Binance owes to the government.

Yadav tells CNBC that even though CZ’s vast wealth is not directly under threat by virtue of his conviction and the sentencing today, there may still be some indirect effects.

“Negative long-term impact on Binance will diminish the value of CZ’s investment in the crypto exchange,” said Yadav. “Conversely, however, CZ may even benefit if Binance begins a path to recovery following today’s sentencing, the plea deal and monitorship arrangement, and regains its market share over time as a result.”

U.S. prosecutors are seeking an above-guidance sentence of 36 months for the former CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Binance on charges of enabling money laundering, according to a sentencing memorandum out late Tuesday.

The memorandum, which was filed with the court for the western district of Washington, states that Zhao should serve a higher sentence that suggested under advisory guidelines to “reflect the gravity of his crimes.”

Under advisory guidelines, Zhao’s sentencing would come in at a range of 12 to 18 months in prison.

“A custodial sentence of 36 months—twice the high end of the Guidelines range—would reflect the seriousness of the offense, promote respect for law, afford adequate deterrence, and be sufficient but not greater than necessary to achieve the goals of sentencing,” U.S. prosecutors said.

Zhao is accused of wilfully failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering program as required by the Bank Secrecy Act, and of effectively allowing Binance to process transactions involving proceeds of unlawful activity, including transactions between Americans and individuals in sanctions jurisdictions.

Binance has separately been sued by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission over the alleged mishandling of customer assets and the operation of an illegal, unregistered exchange in the U.S.

The U.S., which separately accuses Binance and Zhao of violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act and sanctions on Iran, ordered Binance to pay $4.3 billion in fines and forfeiture. Zhao agreed to pay a $50 million fine.

Zhao stepped down as Binance’s CEO in November last year after reaching this plea and was replaced by the former Abu Dhabi markets regulator’s chief, Richard Teng.

Zhao was not immediately available for comment when contacted via social media platform X. Binance has yet to return a request for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Binance chief Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty Tuesday to criminal charges and stepped down as the company’s CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the Department of Justice, according to court documents. The plea arrangement with the government resolves a multiyear investigation into the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.

Zhao appeared before Judge Brian Tsuchida in a Seattle courtroom to enter his plea. Zhao and others were charged with violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement an effective anti-money-laundering program and for willfully violating U.S. economic sanctions “in a deliberate and calculated effort to profit from the U.S. market without implementing controls required by U.S. law,” according to the Justice Department.

Zhao said Tuesday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that he had “made mistakes” and “must take responsibility.” He said Richard Teng, the company’s former global head of regional markets, has been named the new CEO of Binance.

The action against Binance and its founder was a joint effort by the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Treasury Department. The Securities and Exchange Commission was notably absent.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a release Tuesday that the exchange allowed illicit actors to make more than 100,000 transactions that supported activities such as terrorism and illegal narcotics and that it allowed more than 1.5 million virtual currency trades that violated U.S. sanctions.

It also allowed transactions associated with terrorist groups such as Hamas’ Al-Qassam Brigades, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, al-Qaida and ISIS, Yellen said in the release, noting Binance “never filed a single suspicious activity report.”

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a press conference Tuesday that the fine is “one of the largest penalties we have ever obtained.”

“Using new technology to break the law does not make you a disruptor. It makes you a criminal,” Garland said.

“Binance prioritized its profits over the safety of the American people,” he said.

According to a 92-page consent order between Binance and Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCen, the crypto exchange “even developed a process to notify VIP users if they became the subject of a law enforcement inquiry.”

Zhao personally pleaded guilty to violating and causing a financial institution to violate the Bank Secrecy Act, according to the plea agreement. The DOJ is also recommending that the court impose a $50 million fine on Zhao.

Zhao has been released on a $175 million personal recognizance bond secured by $15 million in cash and has a sentencing hearing scheduled for Feb. 23.

Binance will continue to operate but with new ground rules. The company will be required to maintain and enhance its compliance program to ensure its business is in line with U.S. anti-money-laundering standards. The company is required to appoint an independent compliance monitor.

The case against Binance, which was unsealed Tuesday, shows that three criminal charges were brought against the exchange, including conducting an unlicensed money-transmitting business, violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and conspiracy.

Binance has agreed to forfeit $2.5 billion to the government, as well as to pay a fine of $1.8 billion.

The Justice Department said in its filing Tuesday that Binance “knowingly and willfully” caused the supply of services to Iran, in breach of U.S. sanctions. It follows a report that Binance processed billions of dollars worth of Iranian transactions.

“Let me be clear: We are also sending a message to the virtual currency industry more broadly, today and for the future,” Yellen wrote in a press brief.

The settlement comes after FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was found guilty of several criminal counts of fraud and conspiracy on Nov. 2 following just three hours of deliberation by the jury. Experts told CNBC that, for a high-profile monthlong trial that involved nearly 20 witnesses and hundreds of exhibits, they’d never seen such a speedy decision.

CNBC reached out to Zhao for comment but did not immediately hear back. Binance did not respond to several CNBC requests for comment.

The charges follow civil suits brought earlier this year by both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Binance has been the center of intense regulatory scrutiny over how it operates, with officials in multiple jurisdictions flagging concerns about the company’s approach toward launching in certain markets even when it lacks the authority to do so, and allegations of involvement in illicit dealings such as money laundering and securities fraud.

The SEC targeted the company with an expansive lawsuit in June, alleging that Binance was running an illegal securities exchange and mishandling customer funds.

The SEC hit rival exchange Coinbase with a similar lawsuit shortly after, alleging it is operating as an unauthorized securities exchange, broker and clearing agency.

And on Monday the SEC sued Kraken, alleging that the exchange commingled $33 billion in customer crypto assets with its own company assets, creating the potential for a significant risk of loss to its users.

In the 13 charges brought against Binance by the SEC, the agency accused Binance of commingling billions of dollars in customer money with Binance’s own funds, similar to allegations made against the now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX. SEC Chair Gary Gensler added, “Zhao and Binance entities engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law.”

Started by the Chinese-born entrepreneur in 2017, Binance went from being a relatively obscure name to being a major force in crypto in a matter of weeks. Binance remains the world’s largest crypto exchange globally, processing billions of dollars in trading volume every year.

While its holding company is based in the Cayman Islands, Binance doesn’t have a global headquarters and Zhao frequently resisted calls to create one, saying he wanted the platform to run on a “decentralized” operating model.

In 2021, the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority barred Binance’s U.K. unit from operating in the country, saying it wasn’t authorized to carry out regulated activities. More recently, Binance scrapped plans to pursue a full U.K. license after the regulator said its know-your-customer and anti-money-laundering controls didn’t meet its requirements.

In the CFTC’s complaint, the regulator alleged that Binance, Zhao, and the company’s ex-chief compliance officer, Samuel Lim, operated an “illegal” exchange, ran a “sham” compliance program, and violated the Commodity Exchange Act, including laws “designed to prevent and detect money laundering and terrorism financing.”

Binance and Zhao filed a motion in July to dismiss the CFTC’s suit. The U.S. arm of the exchange is also pushing back on the SEC’s lawsuit, filing a protective order against what they call the SEC’s “fishing expedition.”

Of particular concern for the crypto industry are the implications of the agency’s crackdown on crypto for myriad tokens and blockchains — not just the exchanges. The SEC maintains that several of the tokens Binance and Coinbase offer on their platforms — such as Solana’s sol, Cardano’s ada, and Polygon’s matic — are securities that should have been registered with the agency.

— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report.

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