Ripple, North Island Ventures back $6 million round for cross-chain platform Squid

Squid, a cross-chain infrastructure platform initially incubated within the Axelar ecosystem and since grown into an independent platform, has raised $6 million in strategic funding to launch a new consumer-facing product.

North Island Ventures led the round, with Ripple, Dialectic, and Borderless also participating. Angel investors, including Axelar co-founder and former director Georgios Vlachos, Enso Finance founder Connor Howe, and Constructive founder Dan Lynch, also joined the round, Squid's pseudonymous co-founder Fig told The Block.

The round came together over the past few months and closed recently, Fig said, declining to disclose the round's structure, Squid's valuation, or whether any investors received board, advisory, or observer seats.

The new funding brings Squid's total funding to $13.5 million, having previously raised a $3.5 million seed round in 2023 and a $4 million strategic round in 2024.

Since launching in 2023, Squid says it has processed more than $6 billion in volume through more than 4 million transactions across over 100 blockchain networks. The platform says it has served more than 1 million users through its own app and partner integrations spanning wallets, decentralized finance applications, payments, and agentic commerce.

Squid currently generates revenue through enterprise services and ecosystem partnerships, with plans to also introduce transaction fees, though the timing depends on upcoming product milestones, Fig said.

Squid currently operates a web-based bridge-and-swap application and is now preparing a broader consumer product built on its routing and settlement infrastructure.

"The vision is to make directly accessing whatever you need in crypto as simple as the cross-chain swaps Squid already handles today," Fig said.

Squid expects to share more about its consumer roadmap in the coming months.

Squid's existing application allows users to move assets across different blockchain ecosystems, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Cosmos, and the XRP Ledger, in a single transaction.

Squid said it is the official bridge partner for the XRP Ledger, operates a validator on the network, and participates in governance. On the agentic commerce side, Squid said it launched an adapter for Tempo's Machine Payments Protocol on launch day and has also developed a model context protocol integration that allows AI agents to execute cross-chain swaps.

Cross-chain interoperability has long been one of the most difficult areas in crypto, with the sector experiencing multiple bridge exploits and security incidents over the years. Fig said Squid has completed nine independent security audits to date, recorded no exploits, and maintained 99.99% uptime.

Asked whether Squid is looking to serve projects reassessing their cross-chain infrastructure following issues elsewhere in the market, Fig said the platform is open to conversations with teams seeking secure connectivity.

Squid's team currently consists of around 20 people, and it is not currently hiring, Fig said.

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