Early Riders Leads Onramp’s Series A
Austin, TX — May 14, 2026
Early Riders, the bitcoin-denominated venture capital firm, today announced it led Onramp’s $12.5 million Series A to support the company’s continued expansion as the bitcoin-native money platform built on Multi-Institution Custody.
At the center of Onramp’s platform is Multi-Institution Custody, an institutional-grade custody model that distributes key management across multiple independent institutions. The architecture is designed to preserve bitcoin’s core ownership guarantees while reducing the operational burden, attack surface, and single-counterparty risk that has historically made bitcoin custody difficult for material capital holders. Today the company serves individuals, businesses, and institutional allocators, like the first UK Pension fund allocating to bitcoin.
Onramp recently launched Onramp Finance, expanding from a custody-first platform, into a broader bitcoin-native financial services platform. Onramp Finance brings cash management, bitcoin brokerage, rewards, spending, the Onramp research Terminal, bitcoin-backed loans, retirement access, inheritance planning, and long-term custody into one seamless and integrated experience.
For years, bitcoin holders have been forced to manage their financial lives across numerous different exchanges, banks, brokerage platforms, and lenders. Onramp is consolidating those functions into one platform built around long-term ownership, sound money, and institutional-grade custody.
The company’s model has been validated by some of the most credible institutions, including Bitcoin Policy Institute has endorsed Multi-Institution Custody as the preferred custody method for state Strategic Bitcoin Reserves, and Cartwright as the first UK pension fund to allocate to bitcoin selecting Onramp as the custodian.
The Series A financing will support the scaling of Multi-Institution Custody infrastructure by onboarding additional regulated global custodians, banks, RIAs, and digital native fintech. The capital also supports the continued scaling of Onramp Finance, the company’s neo-banking like offering.
"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 with bitcoin a way to plug in and offer their clients the same caliber of security and service."
"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."
Early Riders is proud to deepen its relationship with Onramp as the leader of the firm’s investment round.
With every investment, Early Riders open sources the company’s investment memo. To read the full reason why Early Riders invested in Onramp, and our vision for the company, find the full memo here.
About Onramp
Onramp is a bitcoin-native financial platform built on Multi-Institution Custody. The company provides superior custody, bitcoin brokerage, bitcoin-backed lending, inheritance planning, cash management, card rewards, and client services through one integrated platform. Onramp serves sophisticated individuals, families, businesses, and institutions seeking a secure, long-term approach to bitcoin ownership.
About Early Riders
Early Riders is the first bitcoin-denominated venture firm investing in the digital infrastructure frontier. The firm invests in pre-seed to Series A businesses building across custody, financial services, payments, treasury, savings, artificial intelligence, and digital asset infrastructure.