NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 10TH, 2024
Fountain, the Web3 operating system serving enterprises and institutions, announced today that it has raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round.
This milestone follows Fountain’s graduation from Alliance, the premier crypto incubator, and includes investments from Foundation Capital, Caladan, Primal Capital, Druid Ventures, United Overseas Bank (UOB), NGC Ventures, Marin Ventures, Blockchain Founders Fund, and angel investors such as Rene Reinsberg, Co-Founder and President of Celo, and Nathan McCauley, Co-Founder and CEO of Anchorage Digital.
Fountain’s platform is driving the next wave of enterprises, funds, and institutions to safely, compliantly, and efficiently operate on-chain and engage with DeFi. As DeFi protocols grow in popularity, their susceptibility to market volatility and risk poses challenges, particularly for investors familiar with traditional finance. Fountain addresses these concerns by providing a smart contract multi-sig platform with a powerful no-code workflow builder. The platform enables companies to seamlessly manage and automate treasury, risk management, and trading operations, making it easier for large institutions to adopt Web3 best practices.
Fountain is the first in the market to offer a no-code and low-code automation solution for the Web3 industry, unlocking new levels of customization for both non-technical users and developers. This allows users to quickly build robust on-chain workflows without needing extensive time or a team of experts, enabling them to engage with more complex strategies and take on riskier positions.
“There has been a paradigm shift with operations moving from centralized exchanges and services to DEX and on-chain infrastructures,” said Morgan Lai, CEO and Founder of Fountain. “As we believe the next wave of crypto adoption will come from Enterprise and Institutions, Fountain is building the next generation of middleware platforms enabling organizations to adopt on-chain operations. Crypto is one the most volatile asset classes; when market conditions change, organizations need to update certain parameters, like collateral requirements and liquidation ratios, to keep assets safe. The future of decentralized finance depends on advanced, smart contract based infrastructure.”
The funding will fuel development, user testing, and security audits while providing working capital to expand hires in sales, technology, and compliance. Fountain is currently running a private beta program working with some of the largest hedge funds and market makers in the industry.
Founded in 2022, Fountain’s leadership team brings over 20 years of combined experience in DeFi and AI. Morgan Lai, CEO and Founder, is also the General Partner of Formulate Ventures and a former Partner at Foundation Capital. Since 2018, Lai has been actively investing in the low-code/no-code space, with multiple portfolio companies under Formulate Ventures. This expertise played a pivotal role in shaping Fountain, leading to the creation of the first-ever no-code workflow solution for the Web3 industry. Lai’s extensive career in enterprise AI, both as an engineer and founder, includes earning a Master of Engineering in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from MIT, as well as a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT. She is passionate about leveraging machine learning to automate enterprise processes.
“As the cryptocurrency ecosystem continues to mature, we’ve both experienced and observed a growing need for firms capable of bridging the gap between traditional markets and this new financial ecosystem,” said John Gu, CEO at Caladan. “Fountain fills that gap by developing tailored solutions that meet the unique needs of institutions. The expert knowledge the Fountain team has accrued over years of working in DeFi, trading, and AI will unlock a much higher degree of market functionality.”
The DeFi ecosystem faces numerous challenges as it continues to evolve. As on-chain operations mature to compete with centralized counterparts, the need for robust operations management tools becomes increasingly clear and essential. In response, Fountain is developing infrastructure that is both approachable and secure. Based in New York City, Fountain is seeking exceptional talent to drive innovation and lead the paradigm shift of bringing the world’s financial systems natively on-chain.
About Fountain
Fountain is a NYC based seed stage company building the first Web3 operating system for enterprise and institutions to secure, manage and automate on-chain workflows.
For more information, visit www.fountainplatform.com
Contact:
CEO/Founder: Morgan Lai, m@fountainplatform.com
