Key Takeaways
- Ibis exited stealth with a $250M credit facility from FalconX and pre-seed capital from top crypto firms.
- Anchorage Digital Bank will custody assets, helping bring regulated credit infrastructure to digital assets.
- Ibis plans to expand its onchain financing model into GPU infrastructure, robotics, and venture capital.
Funding and Strategic Backing
Onchain credit platform Ibis announced its emergence from stealth on Oct. 28, backed by a $250 million credit facility from digital asset financial services firm FalconX and the completion of its pre-seed funding round.
The pre-seed round was led by FalconX alongside a syndicate of digital asset and capital markets institutional investors, including Anchorage Digital, Innovating Capital, and executives from Revolut, Injective Foundation, Superstate, Agora, Blockchain.com, and Pyth, among others.
Over the past few years, FalconX has focused on bridging institutional capital and onchain debt markets through structured credit products and tokenized lending. In August, it partnered with Ethena Labs on a $1 billion warehouse financing facility via a special purpose vehicle (SPV). The facility deploys capital backed by USDe into overcollateralized institutional credit loans serviced and managed by FalconX.
It has expanded its tokenized credit products and onchain lending vaults onto emerging Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks, incorporating automated margin controls, real-time collateral monitoring, and onchain settlement.
Ibis, meanwhile, operates an end-to-end institutional credit platform designed to originate, tokenize, underwrite, risk-manage, and service structured credit facilities. The company aims to address a long-standing structural gap in frontier markets, where traditional lending infrastructure frequently fails to support emerging industries with non-standard collateral and complex risk profiles.
“Frontier markets are developing faster than the financial infrastructure built to support them,” said Cooper Emmons, founder and CEO of Ibis. “Today, many high-quality businesses with strong fundamentals are underserved, not because they lack creditworthiness, but because traditional underwriters refuse to innovate.”
The platform initially targets institutions in the digital asset and prediction markets sectors, with plans to expand its credit infrastructure to additional frontier market segments.
Under the operational model, Anchorage Digital Bank will serve as a custody, banking, and design partner to ensure collateral is secured in a regulated environment. Venture capital firm Innovating Capital will provide expertise in transaction structuring, risk management, and strategic development.
“Access to reliable, institutional-grade credit is an important part of the continued maturation of digital assets,” said Joshua Lim, co-head of global markets at FalconX. “Ibis is building infrastructure to help bridge the gap between institutional capital allocators and a new generation of onchain market participants.”
Institutional Industry Support
Institutional backing for the platform highlights growing demand for disciplined, yield-bearing structured credit products designed specifically for digital asset trading firms and emerging Web3 businesses.
“Credit is one of the last pieces of institutional infrastructure that digital asset markets are still building,” said Nathan McCauley, CEO and co-founder of Anchorage Digital. “Ibis is taking a disciplined approach: structured facilities, real underwriting, and collateral held in regulated custody at Anchorage Digital Bank. That combination is what lets institutional capital participate with confidence.”
Ibis’ investor roster includes high-profile industry executives, such as Jordi Alexander (CEO, Selini), Shiliang Tang (managing partner, Monarq Asset Management), Mirza Uddin (COO, Injective Foundation), Roshun Patel (head of credit and alternatives, Erebor), and Nick van Eck (CEO, Agora).
