Social messaging service company Telegram has raised an additional $850 million in its preliminary, non-public initial coin offering (ICO), pushing its cryptocurrency totals collected to $1.7 billion.

The first pre-ICO took place from January 29 to February 13, and managed to attract $850 million from 81 investors, followed by an unusual second round fund-raise.

A notice filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicates 94 different entities took part in the second round of the pre-ICO, which started on March 14. The identities of individuals and companies investing in the ICO have not been disclosed.

Last week, Bloomberg reported that investors were placing sufficient orders in the second round, even after the token was priced at more than triple last month’s initial level. During the pre-ICO, the Gram tokens were sold at around $0.38. The price during the second round was $1.33 per coin.

The ICO was undertaken using Federal Exemption 506(c) guidelines, which state that “a company can broadly solicit and generally advertise the offering and still be deemed to be in compliance with the exemption’s requirements” so long as certain conditions are met.

Telegram is seeking to build its own blockchain network called the TON Network with Telegram tokens built-in, enabling much faster transaction speeds than rival blockchain networks. It is raising funds to build this network, rent servers, boost the number of users, and pay operating expenses.

Darren Franceschini, chief executive officer of Blockchain Technologies Consulting in Canada, said the impact of Telegram’s ICO will be “a double-edged sword.”

“It will show that there is room for established businesses to join this space with a capital raise of their own,” he said. “It will unfortunately also provide a new sense of possibility among others when it comes to their raising capabilities that may further saturate the market.”