AUSTIN, May 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — With more than $1B in assets under custody and zero security incidents since its founding, Onramp will use the funding to scale Onramp Finance, expand partnerships with banks, regulated financial institutions, digital native fintechs, and extend its Multi-Institution Custody infrastructure to other regulated custodians worldwide.
Onramp, the bitcoin-centric financial services platform built on Multi-Institution Custody, today announced a $12.5M Series A round at a $135M valuation, led by Early Riders, with participation from strategic angel investors. Onramp now custodies more than $1 billion in assets with zero security incidents since founding, and will deploy the new capital to scale Onramp Finance, the company’s new neo banking-like offering, while expanding sales and partnership efforts to distribute its core technology to digital-native fintechs, financial institutions, and RIAs worldwide. Onramp will also accelerate the buildout of Multi-Institution Custody infrastructure by onboarding additional regulated custodians globally.
Bitcoin is ready to cross the chasm, blending with traditional assets in the portfolios and accounts of every serious investor. What it has been missing is custody architecture that combines the long-term security serious wealth requires with the ease of use of any other online account. For more than a decade, the industry has been trapped between two imperfect options: take on the single-custodian risk of an exchange or fund product, or shoulder the full operational and attack-surface burden of self-custody. Onramp pioneered Multi-Institution Custody (MIC) to solve that problem at the architectural level, distributing key control across independent regulated entities while preserving on-chain verifiability and removing the operational burden from the client. With BitGo, Coincover, and Tetra Trust as key partners, Onramp serves serious clients globally across individuals, businesses, and institutional capital, and can implement multi-jurisdictional quorums for complex international structures.
“We built Onramp for people who measure outcomes in decades. That means cash that earns, bitcoin held the right way, gold ownership, retirement accounts, and inheritance planning all sitting under one roof on infrastructure that is built to last,” said Michael Tanguma, Founder and CEO of Onramp. “MIC is more than custody. It’s a new design surface for lending, IRAs, prime brokerage, and the financial products bitcoin holders have been waiting for. Custody is just the starting point.”
The architecture has earned institutional validation. Cartwright became the first UK pension fund to allocate to bitcoin and selected Onramp as the custodian. The Bitcoin Policy Institute has endorsed Multi-Institution Custody as the preferred custody method for state Strategic Bitcoin Reserves. Onramp operates as a lean, AI-native organization built on a prudent, conservative posture, achieving a level of operational efficiency that exceeds legacy custodians by a wide margin on assets under custody per employee.
Since launching in April 2023, Onramp has grown from a custody breakthrough into a full bitcoin-centric financial services platform. The same MIC architecture that secures a family’s dynasty trust now secures business treasuries, RIA allocations, and institutional balance sheets. Through Onramp Finance, clients run their full financial life on sound principles in a single account: MIC-secured bitcoin, lowest-cost bitcoin brokerage in all 50 states, cash accounts with Onramp-funded rewards up to 5% powered by Bridge, a spending card with up to 1.5% cash back, a bitcoin IRA, and direct access to gold.
“Bitcoin’s long-term success hinges on solving custody in a way that eliminates the single points of failure that have hindered the industry to date. Onramp’s Multi-Institution Custody model is the most credible answer we’ve seen, and the clearest path to a category-defining business,” said Liam Nelson, Partner at Early Riders on the fund’s second investment in Onramp. “We’ve backed the company to turn proven demand into the industry standard, and to give every firm building in bitcoin a way to plug in and offer their clients the same caliber of security and service.”
Onramp will deploy the capital across two priorities. The first is engineering and product, including the continued buildout of the Onramp Finance platform, furthering the neo banking money management platform, developing more robust corporate treasury solutions, and the infrastructure required to license MIC to other regulated custodians. The second is sales, marketing, business development, and partnerships, with a focus on onboarding new clients directly, enabling RIAs and financial institutions to offer a white-label version of Onramp’s solution, and adding new custodian partners to the MIC network across digital-native fintechs, exchanges, and traditional finance.
The combined effect is a clear mission: make MIC the default custody standard for bitcoin as it crosses into the mainstream, and give every firm adopting bitcoin, from digital-native fintechs to legacy financial institutions, a way to plug in and offer their clients the kind of robust, institutional-grade services that until now have only been available to a narrow slice of the market.
Onramp has also appointed David Thayer, Retired Partner at Blackstone, as a strategic advisor, deepening the company’s bench as it scales into traditional finance and licenses MIC infrastructure to regulated custodians worldwide.
“I spent the last twenty years of my career on a team carefully and successfully evaluating infrastructure businesses,” said David Thayer, Retired Partner at Blackstone and Strategic Advisor at Onramp. “The ones that endure are built to thrive under the conditions they were designed for – while adapting to those they weren’t designed for. As institutional capital moves into Bitcoin, the custody question becomes practically the only question that matters. The simpler approach is always better: hold Bitcoin, and hold it tight and right. Onramp built the architecture that makes this approach accessible to serious capital at any scale – experiencing zero security incidents while attracting over a billion USD under custody.”
Onramp’s team brings together backgrounds from Brown Brothers Harriman, Coinbase, Bain, Stifel, Google, Unchained, and leading bitcoin-native firms. Onramp Media and Onramp Research extend that expertise outward through frameworks, reports, and long-form conversations that compound conviction over time.
The funding follows the April 21, 2026 launch of Onramp Finance, which made the company’s full financial platform available to clients in all 50 states on top of the existing MIC foundation. Onramp Finance is built on Multi-Institution Custody across Onramp, BitGo, Coincover, and Tetra Trust, and is insured by Lloyd’s of London. The Series A round positions Onramp to scale that platform across every client profile that holds bitcoin in size, and to license the underlying MIC architecture to the next generation of regulated custodians.
About Onramp
Onramp is a financial platform for people who think about wealth in decades. Onramp Finance, its latest offering, unifies cash accounts with Onramp-funded rewards up to 5% through a partnership with Bridge, a spending card with up to 1.5% cash back, low-cost bitcoin brokerage in all 50 states, bitcoin IRAs, and direct gold access in a single account. Onramp pioneered Multi-Institution Custody (MIC), a model that eliminates reliance on any single custodian by distributing security across independent institutions including Onramp, BitGo, Coincover, and Tetra. No single institution can access, move, or lose a client’s bitcoin. Bitcoin held in MIC is insured by Lloyd’s of London. Users can learn more at onrampbitcoin.com.
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