A major funding round has shaken the crypto ecosystem. Morpho, the French decentralized finance (DeFi) company, has announced a $175 million financing round. The deal was led by Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, and a16z crypto, the cryptocurrency-focused investment arm of renowned U.S. venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Additional investors include Ledger Cathay—the €110 million fund launched by Ledger and Cathay Capital—NJJ Capital, Xavier Niel’s investment holding company, Bpifrance, Apollo, Circle Ventures, and VanEck. Existing and new backers such as Variant, Wintermute Ventures, Prelude, IOSG, HashKey, Mirana, SBI Group, and Bam Azizi also participated in the round.
The fundraising comes less than two months after Morpho officially announced that it had surpassed the symbolic $1 billion valuation threshold.
The company achieved unicorn status through the appreciation of its native token. Embedded within the Morpho protocol, the token grants governance rights and trades freely on the market, allowing its valuation to fluctuate based on demand. While this financing model remains relatively uncommon within the French startup ecosystem, it is widely used across the crypto industry.
“Building a Global Open Credit Network”
This time, however, Morpho has turned to the traditional venture capital playbook to move closer to its ambition of becoming a core technology infrastructure provider for global finance.
“Finance has long been constrained by outdated infrastructure, fragmented systems, and intermediaries that extract value at the expense of users,” says Paul Frambot, co-founder and CEO of Morpho.
“We created Morpho to change that. Our ambition is to build a global open credit network—one that connects capital providers with borrowers anywhere in the world.”
The blockchain lending and borrowing platform aims to become a new technological backbone for banks and asset managers, enabling them to distribute credit more efficiently.
“Credit is the primary profit engine in financial services, yet its infrastructure remains fragmented, opaque, and inefficient. Morpho is the most ambitious effort we have seen to rebuild this sector from the ground up,” says Gabe Mennesson, Partner at Ribbit Capital.
Frankie, Managing Partner at Paradigm, shares an equally bullish outlook:
“In the coming years, every bank, asset manager, and pension fund will want exposure to decentralized credit markets.”
Positioning Itself as Infrastructure for Institutional Finance
Against this backdrop, Morpho intends to continue expanding its international footprint.
Founded in 2021, the company now reports approximately $10 billion in deposits across its platform and $3.5 billion in outstanding loans.
Its infrastructure is already being used by major industry players, including Coinbase, Ledger, Bitpanda, Kraken, and SG Forge, underscoring its growing role as a key technology provider at the intersection of traditional finance and decentralized finance.
With fresh capital from some of the world's most influential investors in fintech, venture capital, and crypto, Morpho is betting that decentralized credit markets can evolve from a niche segment into a core component of the global
