Cycles, the crypto infrastructure startup founded by Cosmos co-founder Ethan Buchman, has secured $6.4 million in fresh funding led by Blockchange Ventures to accelerate development of its privacy-preserving clearing network for crypto markets and stablecoin payments, the team said Thursday.
The round was also backed by Coinbase Ventures, Compound VC, Primitive Ventures, and angel investors. The raise increases the company’s total funding to $8.7 million after a $2.3 million pre-seed round completed in 2025.
The new capital will help boost the rollout of the Cycles clearing network and support the expansion of the company’s first products, including Cycles Prime, an institutional solution designed for OTC trading firms, the team stated.
The platform allows firms to privately net obligations across counterparties, reducing liquidity requirements and counterparty exposure without collateral, asset transfers, or changes to existing trading relationships. Cycles Prime is debuting with Lynq and FalconX as anchor partners.
While clearing systems are foundational to traditional financial markets, crypto markets still largely rely on gross settlement, where counterparties must fully prefund transactions. That model creates capital inefficiencies, liquidity bottlenecks, and heightened market fragility during periods of volatility.
Cycles aims to address that gap through a multilateral clearing network capable of netting obligations across crypto trading and payment flows. The company was spun out of Informal Systems.
“Clearing is a financial superpower that has historically only been available to large financial institutions,” Buchman stated. “Our goal is to bring that superpower to everyone else, through a privacy-preserving clearing network with capital efficiency at its core, and without centralized intermediaries.”
The importance of clearing infrastructure became especially apparent during the crypto market turmoil in October 2025, when more than $19 billion in leverage was liquidated within roughly a single day. Because many digital asset markets still lack efficient netting systems, participants are often forced to lock up capital to manage trading obligations, amplifying stress during volatile periods.
“Clearing is the cornerstone of capital-efficient markets like foreign exchange allowing the movement of massive volumes of value without crippling liquidity requirements,” said Rob Schmults, General Partner at Blockchange Ventures. “We see Cycles providing an essential coordination layer to bring the efficiency and effectiveness of clearing to new markets. Doing this will allow businesses to clear and settle payments privately, optimize capital flow, and reduce the need for idle capital. As global adoption accelerates, Cycles can become a category defining standard for how value is settled and netted across entire ecosystems and markets.”
Alongside Cycles Prime, the company is also launching Cycles Pay, a stablecoin payments application for individuals and businesses.
The app routes payments through the Cycles clearing engine to minimize capital movement while supporting invoicing, expense management, and future credit products aimed at improving cash-flow management on stablecoin rails.