Participated · Seed · Jul 2026

Bundle is developing a blockchain-powered rewards platform that enables brands to combine their incentive budgets into shared reward pools so businesses can offer larger rewards while lowering customer acquisition costs. The startup launched from stealth with founders Bader Al Kalooti and Mostafa Wanas. It announced a $5.5 million pre-Seed round to fund product development and go-to-market activities. The financing round was led by Ethereal Ventures and Further, with participation from Nascent, GSR, Scenius Capital, Anchorage Digital, and Nuwa Capital. Bundle is positioned in the Web3 and rewards space and is headquartered in the UAE. The company aims to attract brands to its pooled-incentive model to create more compelling customer rewards.

Participated · Seed · Jun 2026

Ground offers an API that lets financial platforms embed onchain yield products—matching strategies to clients' risk and liquidity preferences—without building their own blockchain integrations. Its platform currently supports crypto-native yield sources including lending protocols and structured products, and plans to add liquid staking tokens; Cuming cited protocols such as Aave, Morpho, Maple, and Kamino across Ethereum, Solana, and Layer 2 networks. Target customers include fintechs, neobanks, wealth managers, exchanges, and asset managers building yield, savings, or investment products. Ground launched from stealth alongside its fundraising and is based in San Francisco. The company plans to monetize via usage-based platform fees and intends to expand its team by two to four hires. Ground was co-founded by Reid Cuming and CTO Sam Yoon; Cuming previously co-founded Superstate and served at Compound Treasury, and the company currently has three full-time employees plus one contractor.

Participated · Seed · Apr 2026

Kleva develops AI agents for collections that automate contact centers for banks, lenders and fintechs. The company says its solution recovers about 25% more debt while cutting costs up to 70%. Kleva was founded in 2025 by Ed Escobar (CEO) and Juan Martín Pagella (COO), who previously served as CCO of Sirena; both are non-operating partners at Sidetool. The recent $1.55M Seed raise, led by Wollef Ventures with participation from Nascent, Kuiper VC and Lerer Hippeau, is intended to scale its AI agents and commercial efforts. The articles did not disclose revenue or user metrics.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2026

Birch Hill Holdings is an institutional digital asset infrastructure firm that structures on-chain lending strategies and tokenized asset market access for fiduciaries. Its core offering combines traditional credit-market discipline with blockchain settlement efficiencies, anchored by the Birch Hill Collateral Risk Framework that delivers real-time oversight of collateral quality, liquidity conditions, and pricing data integrity. The platform works with institutional service providers for custody, monitoring, identity verification, and audit to ensure a fully compliant operating environment. Birch Hill’s founding team previously built structured credit products at Goldman Sachs and institutional risk systems within BlackRock’s Aladdin platform, later spinning up a digital asset research unit now operating as Birch Hill Labs. With the newly raised capital, the company will grow its technical risk and engineering teams and pursue regulatory registrations needed to serve institutional clients. Initial lending strategies are rolling out through established blockchain lending platforms, with plans to expand into a broader suite of institutional credit offerings tailored to varying compliance and risk requirements. Based in New York, Birch Hill has so far secured $2.5 million in pre-seed funding to fuel these initiatives.

Participated · Seed · Jan 2026

Tenbin Labs is building infrastructure that transforms real-world assets such as gold, foreign exchange, and commodities into on-chain tokens that settle in roughly 30 seconds, charge no routine mint-or-burn fees, and accrue yield from both institutional carry and DeFi sources. Instead of simply wrapping assets, the company ties each token’s collateral and pricing directly to liquidity on venues like the CME futures market, allowing the tokens to inherit deep, real-world order books. This dual on-chain/off-chain design is meant to eliminate the shallow liquidity and price distortions that hamper most tokenized assets today. Tenbin’s first product, a yield-bearing tokenized gold instrument, is slated to launch in early 2026 in partnership with market makers and prime brokers such as Hidden Road and Ripple Prime. Future plans include expanding the asset suite to global FX pairs (e.g., BRL, MXN, JPY), additional commodities and metals, and energy products. Key operating features include ≈30-second minting/redemption, immediate composability across DeFi, and yields sourced from both TradFi carry trades and on-chain stablecoin strategies. Financially, the company has secured a $7 million seed round and has not yet disclosed revenue or user metrics.