Shipping giant OceanPal bets on NEAR with plan to acquire 10% of supply

Nasdaq-listed shipping company OceanPal Inc. is launching NEAR corporate treasury, joining a growing trend of non-crypto firms diversifying into digital assets.

Nasdaq-listed OceanPal Inc., a global shipping company, has announced the completion of a US $120 million private investment in public equity transaction.

According to the announcement, the capital will support a treasury plan to accumulate NEAR tokens—targeting at least 10% of the total supply—and fund the deployment of the blockchain‑native AI infrastructure powered by NEAR Protocol (NEAR).

“We believe NEAR presents the greatest asymmetric upside across mature projects in the digital asset market … We plan to use this decentralised, confidential compute infrastructure to capitalise on the explosive demand for privacy‑first, regulatory‑compliant AI across enterprise markets,” said CEO Sal Ternullo.

This move by OceanPal marks the first corporate treasury holding of NEAR tokens.The announcement also highlights a broader trend of non-crypto companies diversifying into digital assets.

The initiative comes alongside leadership changes at OceanPal, with former State Street executive Sal Ternullo appointed co-CEO and David Schwed, with prior experience at BNY Mellon, Galaxy, and Robinhood, joining as COO.

The advisory board for SovereignAI includes prominent figures such as NEAR Foundation co-founder Illia Polosukhin, Richard Muirhead of Fabric Ventures, and Lukasz Kaiser of OpenAI, signaling the company’s commitment to building institutional-grade, privacy-first AI infrastructure on blockchain.