Congratulations to Erebor on opening today as the first new OCC-chartered bank specifically engineered to serve the innovation economy. We’ve backed the team since their very first round and are proud to be continuing our support in the Series B. I'll also be joining Erebor's board of directors. 

Erebor stands for something unique: a blank-slate opportunity to build foundational financial infrastructure for a new generation. The company has already accomplished what typically takes years: securing conditional OCC charter approval in October (the fastest for a depository institution in 25 years) and FDIC insurance in December. Erebor isn't a fintech playing bank. It’s a real bank, purpose-built for a new era.

The founding team, Palmer Luckey (Oculus, Anduril), Owen Rapaport (Aer Compliance), Jacob Hirshman (ex-Circle), Trevor Capozza, and Aaron Pelz (ex-Pinwheel), brings an unusual combination: deep technology fluency paired with regulatory sophistication. Nearly half of the team comes from banking and compliance backgrounds, including veterans with deep experience working with the OCC and the FDIC. You don't often see this combination of technical depth and regulatory sophistication in the same room, particularly at a company that started operations less than a year ago.

The opportunity

Three of the fastest-growing sectors in recent years are AI, defense tech, and digital assets. Legacy banks struggle with all three, since their infrastructure is decades old and their risk frameworks can't keep up. The result is a financing gap that traditional lenders can’t price correctly, and that is ill-suited for many venture capital and private equity strategies.

Erebor is an infrastructure bank for businesses, not consumers. They plan to provide GPU equipment financing for AI datacenters, contract-backed loans for defense startups, and actual stablecoin operations that work. These are products that incumbents typically won't touch.

Modern infrastructure

The technical piece is what gets me. Erebor will internalize fiat-to-stablecoin conversion, which means true 24/7 operations. Bank on weekends. Bank overnight. Bank whenever. Modern APIs built from scratch, not legacy core systems wearing a disguise.

For companies managing global treasury operations programmatically, this beats SWIFT and ACH by a generation. There's over $10 trillion in dollar-denominated credit demand outside the U.S. I think Erebor's regulated, FDIC-insured platform can grab real share here.

Starting from a position of strength

Erebor launches today with $625 million in committed capital and an equally large depositor pipeline already lined up. The bank plans to run conservatively: 12% Tier 1 Leverage ratio (double typical requirements), 60% of assets in cash and high-quality liquid investments.

Starting a bank is brutal. The three hardest parts are typically capitalization, regulatory approval, and getting to scale on your depository base. Meanwhile, Erebor is launching right out of the gate having already achieved meaningful milestones on all three.

We're at a point where the companies building the future need financial infrastructure that doesn't slow them down. Ultimately, that's what Erebor is. We couldn’t be more excited to partner with Palmer, Owen, Jacob, Trevor, Aaron, and the team on their vision for a new generational player in the banking world.