Backed by major venture and crypto investors, Ostium aims to merge digital assets with real-world markets and expand its Perpetuals platform globally.
A crypto startup founded by two Harvard graduates has raised $20 million to accelerate its push into the fast-growing market for perpetual futures, a derivative that has surged in popularity among digital-asset traders worldwide. Ostium, a decentralized exchange launched in 2022, secured the Series A funding in a round led by General Catalyst and Jump Crypto, the digital-assets arm of quantitative trading firm Jump Trading.
The raise marks a major step forward for the young platform, which allows users to speculate on real-world assets—including equities, metals, energy products, and select cryptocurrencies—through blockchain-based trading tools. At the center of its offering are perpetual futures, or “perps,” a high-risk derivative similar to traditional futures but without an expiration date, provided traders meet margin requirements.
The latest financing round also drew participation from Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute, and GSR, according to the company. The deal values Ostium at roughly $250 million, a person familiar with the transaction said, speaking anonymously because the terms are private. Before this round, the startup had raised about $8 million.
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General Catalyst managing director Marc Bhargava said the firm sees an opportunity in platforms that bridge traditional finance and crypto markets. “There’s a growing global audience interested in both,” he said. “The question is how to connect these worlds in a way that feels intuitive and secure.”
Ostium joins a crowded field of decentralized platforms offering perpetuals, a segment that has expanded rapidly as traders look beyond conventional crypto exchanges. Interest in these derivatives surged after the trading protocol Hyperliquid gained significant traction in 2025, spurring new competitors such as the Peter Thiel-backed Lighter and Binance-linked Aster.
Rather than competing directly with crypto-native derivatives giants, Ostium is positioning itself as an alternative to mainstream online brokerages. “We want to compete with the Robinhoods, the eToros, the IGs of the world,” CEO and cofounder Kaledora Kiernan-Linn said.
Kiernan-Linn’s path to crypto is unconventional. A former professional ballet dancer, she trained under demanding instructors before earning a place at The Royal Danish Ballet as a teenager. She later completed her degree at Harvard, where she met cofounder Marco Antonio Ribeiro, a former competitor in multiple International Science Olympiads.
Their startup currently employs 15 people and has focused on bringing traditional asset classes onto decentralized rails. With fresh capital in hand, Ostium plans to target non-U.S. retail traders seeking access to U.S. markets through offshore brokers—an area Kiernan-Linn argues is ripe for disruption. She believes blockchain technology can help streamline a system she describes as opaque and outdated.
“There are very few players building in this space,” she said. “It’s a textbook use case for blockchain, and we’re ready to scale it globally.”
