Ground Raises $3.6M Pre-Seed to Bring Onchain Yield Infrastructure to Fintech Platforms

• Ground has secured $3.6 million in pre-seed funding led by Bain Capital Crypto and ParaFi.
• The startup has emerged from stealth with infrastructure that allows financial platforms to integrate onchain yield through a single API.
• The company plans to expand its engineering team, add protocol integrations, and grow its institutional customer base.
• The investment reflects continued venture interest in infrastructure supporting stablecoins, tokenization, and institutional decentralized finance.

Ground, a San Francisco-based financial infrastructure startup, has raised $3.6 million in pre-seed funding as it launches publicly with software designed to help financial institutions integrate blockchain-based yield products without building their own crypto infrastructure.

The funding round was co-led by Bain Capital Crypto and ParaFi, with participation from Nascent, Robot Ventures, Chapter One, and Consonant Ventures. The financing was structured as a SAFE agreement with token warrants. The fundraising process began in September 2025 and closed the following month before the company’s public launch this week. Ground was founded by Reid Cuming, previously a co-founder of tokenized asset manager Superstate, and Sam Yoon, who has held engineering leadership roles at Braid and HiFi.

Capital to support hiring and platform expansion

The newly raised capital will primarily be used to expand the company’s engineering capabilities, increase hiring across product and go-to-market functions, and broaden integrations with additional blockchain networks and yield protocols. The Ground raise will support these expansion plans as the company currently operates with a small team and expects to recruit several new employees as customer adoption grows.

Rather than offering investment products directly, Ground provides an API layer that allows fintech companies, wealth managers and digital asset platforms to connect customer balances with decentralized finance protocols while generating accounting records compatible with existing financial systems.

The platform currently supports integrations with several established lending protocols, including:

• Aave
• Morpho
• Maple
• Kamino

The infrastructure operates across Ethereum, Solana and selected Layer 2 networks, with additional protocol support expected over time.

Company targets regulated financial platforms

Unlike consumer-focused DeFi applications, Ground is targeting institutions that want blockchain functionality without requiring internal teams to manage wallets, gas fees or protocol integrations.

Its intended customers include:

• Fintech companies
• Digital banks and neobanks
• Wealth management firms
• Corporate treasury platforms
• Crypto exchanges
• Asset managers

The company says its software enables firms to configure allocation policies while handling wallet provisioning, transaction execution and ledger-ready reporting behind the scenes. Revenue will come through usage-based platform fees tied to customer activity.

Infrastructure becomes a larger venture capital theme

Ground’s financing arrives as venture investors increasingly focus on the infrastructure supporting institutional blockchain adoption rather than speculative consumer applications.

Growing stablecoin circulation, tokenized treasury products, Onchain Credit, and blockchain-based settlement networks have increased demand for middleware capable of connecting traditional financial software with decentralized financial markets. Instead of competing with lending protocols themselves, infrastructure providers are building compliance, reporting and operational tools that financial institutions require before deploying customer assets onchain.

That shift has become more pronounced as banks, fintech companies and asset managers explore ways to generate returns on idle digital cash balances while maintaining familiar operational workflows. Although institutional adoption remains dependent on regulatory clarity and risk management standards, investors continue to fund companies building the software layer between traditional finance and decentralized markets.

Ground’s latest funding reflects that broader investment thesis: venture capital is increasingly flowing toward Onchain Yield Infrastructure and other systems that simplify institutional access to blockchain-based financial services rather than toward end-user crypto applications alone.