Anchorage

Anchorage, operating as Anchorage Digital, provides digital asset infrastructure to institutions: custody, staking, trading, governance participation and settlement. Its customers include banks, venture capital firms, fintechs and government bodies. The company was founded in 2017 in San Francisco by Nathan McCauley, now chief executive, and Diogo Mónica, now executive chairman, and has offices in New York, Porto, Singapore and Sioux Falls. In January 2021 its subsidiary Anchorage Digital Bank received a national charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, becoming the first federally chartered crypto bank in the US. It also holds a New York BitLicense and a Major Payment Institution license in Singapore.

Andreessen Horowitz and Blockchain Capital were early backers, and by January 2020 the company had raised $57 million from investors including Visa, Andreessen Horowitz and Blockchain Capital, according to TechCrunch. A Series C of $80 million followed in 2021, less than a year before the next round. In December 2021 Anchorage raised a $350 million Series D led by KKR at a valuation above $3 billion. Participants included Goldman Sachs, Andreessen Horowitz, Apollo credit funds, BlackRock, Blockchain Capital, GIC, GoldenTree Asset Management, Lux Capital, PayPal Ventures, Thoma Bravo, Wellington Management, Kraken and Elad Gil. TechCrunch put the combined Series C and Series D total above $430 million. In February 2026 the stablecoin issuer Tether invested $100 million, a deal reported at a $4.2 billion valuation.

Anchorage remains independent and private. Its 2021 growth included a 96% increase in clients and a 175% increase in headcount year over year, per TechCrunch. The same year the US Department of Justice contracted it to custody seized and forfeited digital assets, and it facilitated Visa's first NFT purchase. It acquired Merkle Data in 2020 and expanded into Asia in 2022, opening an office in Singapore with institutional partners. Its current board includes representatives of GIC, a16z, KKR and Paradigm.

The company shows how a regulated charter can become the core asset of a venture-backed crypto business. Its seed and early-stage investors entered before the bank charter existed, and the later rounds drew large asset managers and sovereign capital that typically avoid unregulated crypto counterparties. The valuation rose from above $3 billion in 2021 to $4.2 billion in 2026 through a market downturn, with a strategic investor setting the most recent price. Nine years after founding, its backers have no public liquidity event.