Sami Ahmed

Sami Ahmed is a corporate and securities lawyer and a partner at Showalter PLLC. He advises startups, growth companies, founders, investors, and boards on financings, mergers and acquisitions, commercial agreements, and securities regulation. He has particular experience with emerging technology, including digital assets and crypto, fintech, and artificial intelligence.

Sami has worked as a general counsel, a regulatory litigator, and a federal appellate clerk, so his advice accounts for how a deal will be negotiated, regulated, and challenged. As General Counsel of Republic Crypto, he led the legal function, supported significant capital raises and acquisitions, and sat on the board of INX, a regulated alternative trading system and broker-dealer.

Companies often retain Sami as outside general counsel. In that role he handles company formation, SAFE and priced equity financings, venture capital and private equity investments, equity compensation, commercial contracts, board and governance matters, and fund formation. He works directly with founders and executives.

For blockchain and crypto companies, Sami has structured token offerings under Regulation D and Regulation S, negotiated token loan and market-making agreements, and designed compliance strategies involving the SEC and the CFTC. He has also advised on money transmission questions, tokenization of real-world assets, and offshore fund and SPV structures.

Before becoming a general counsel, Sami practiced at Kellogg, Hansen, Todd, Figel & Frederick in Washington, D.C., where he was a member of the team defending Ripple Labs against the SEC’s enforcement action over XRP. At Kellogg Hansen he also built extensive regulatory experience, including representing Verizon in proceedings before the Federal Communications Commission, and worked on appellate and commercial litigation. He later practiced at PAG Law PLLC and founded TLX Law.

Sami is a Lecturer at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he designed and teaches a course on blockchain ventures and regulation and received the Wharton Teaching Excellence Award. He is the author of “Cryptocurrency & Robots: How To Tax and Pay Tax on Them,” published in the South Carolina Law Review in 2018, an early law review treatment of cryptocurrency taxation.

Sami speaks Arabic, French, Hindi, and Spanish, and advises clients on cross-border matters involving the Middle East and the Gulf region, drawing on his experience representing the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in U.S. litigation.