Meow has raised $5 million in a seed round of funding from Coinbase Ventures, Gemini Frontier Fund and Lux Capital, among others.
Founded by a team of crypto veterans and former Gemini engineers, Meow is focused on developing a compliant-first approach to corporate treasury participation in crypto markets. The company says it can offer some protection from the risks of inflation, as well as provide crypto-sourced yield in fiat (USD), which is the way corporate treasurers are used to operating.
How it works
Corporate treasuries deposit cash and Meow partners with institutional crypto lending desks to make short-term high yield loans. Meow then collects yields and passes part of the returns back to its customers, who can access the funds within three business days.
“There are really innovative ways to potentially get higher yields on your cash from the cryptocurrency markets. Some of those are trading desks in the space … and some are decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols,” Meow co-founder and CEO Brandon Arvanaghi told CoinDesk in an interview. “Right now, to participate with these folks you need all sorts of bells and whistles. You need to custody your own funds. You need cryptocurrency wallets. Just a bunch of nonsense that nobody wants to deal with, especially corporate treasurers.”
On the other hand, Arvanaghi pointed out that corporate treasurers understand cash. “They want to deposit cash and take advantage of these potentially higher yields. That’s what we offer,” said Arvanaghi.
What’s next
Meow is currently in an early access stage of onboarding initial customers, but the company says it’s ready to scale now.
The company currently partners with two banks, Signature and Silvergate, and is in talks with “several” more banks to build out its network.
Meow anticipates raising additional funding in a Series A in the near future.
“We have not even mentioned that [Series A] letter to investors. It’s just there’s a lot of organic demand, which we’re blessed to be getting,” said Arvanaghi. He estimates that the Series A round could happen in about four months.
