The strategic funding round featured investors like a16z, Coinbase Ventures, Variant, Pantera, and Brevan Howard.
- Morpho did not reveal a valuation tied to the funding, which was secured through a private token sale.
- In 2022, Morpho raised $18 million, while the DeFi firm’s CEO, Paul Frambot, was still in his third year of college.
Morpho, a leading decentralized cryptocurrency lending protocol, has secured $50 million in a strategic funding round led by Ribbit Capital, an early-stage investor renowned for backing fintech giants like Robinhood, Revolut, and Coinbase.
This private token sale also attracted significant participation from major players such as a16z crypto, Coinbase Ventures, Variant, Pantera, Brevan Howard, BlockTower, and Kraken Ventures. While Morpho’s valuation from this funding round remains undisclosed, it’s noteworthy that the company previously raised $18 million in 2022 when CEO Paul Frambot was still in his third year of college.
Morpho’s mission is to revolutionize decentralized finance (DeFi) by integrating it with the foundational layers of the internet. Since its launch two years ago, Morpho has transformed from an optimization layer that enhanced interest rates for Aave and Compound users—stirring the industry in the process—into Morpho Blue, a foundational infrastructure enabling others to build crypto lending applications with customizable risk-management strategies.
“Our ambition has always been to break DeFi out of its niche,” Frambot stated in an interview with CoinDesk. “We aim to eventually, perhaps not immediately, transform private financial infrastructures into public goods.”
The strategic involvement of fintech leaders like Ribbit is crucial to this vision. Companies like Robinhood and Revolut, with their vast distribution networks, can leverage Morpho to design flexible lending and borrowing use cases without fragmenting liquidity, Frambot explained.
“We need to bridge the gap between DeFi and the broader fintech world, and Ribbit was the obvious partner to help us do that,” Frambot added. “There are already incredible synergies that we can explore for real-world integrations, moving beyond the typical crypto leverage use cases that dominate DeFi lending today.”
Other notable investors in this round include Hack VC, IOSG, Rockaway, L1D, Mirana, Cherry, Semantic, Fenbushi, Leadblock, Bitpanda, and Robot Ventures.