A startup most people haven’t heard of just secured one of the more consequential seed rounds in crypto this year. OpenReserve, a fintech company building a blockchain-integrated national bank, closed a $25 million seed round led by a16z crypto, with Coinbase Ventures among 11 investors backing the effort.
What makes this more than another well-funded fintech pitch: OpenReserve has already received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to form a nationally chartered bank.
What OpenReserve is actually building
Founded in 2025 by Diwakar Choubey and Richard Correia, OpenReserve is headquartered at 260 5th Avenue in New York, with a proposed main office in Salt Lake City, Utah. The company has no plans for physical branches. Instead, it aims to operate around the clock as a fully digital, blockchain-native bank targeting digital-asset clients.
OpenReserve plans to offer deposits, lending, payments, and tokenized asset products, all running on blockchain rails designed for continuous, onchain capital markets operations.
Perhaps the most notable piece of the puzzle is ReserveUSD, or rUSD, a compliant stablecoin the company plans to issue through its subsidiary, ReserveUSD, LLC.
The bank’s status is currently listed as “in organization,” meaning it still needs to clear several pre-opening regulatory hurdles. Chief among them: an FDIC deposit insurance application.
Why a16z and Coinbase are betting here
SEC filings from 2026 show over $24 million raised through Regulation D disclosures, confirming the round’s scale. The organizing team extends beyond the two founders to include John Chrystal, David Schwed, Jame Sloan, and Soumya Basu, a group that spans banking, cybersecurity, and blockchain expertise.
The regulatory backdrop
OpenReserve’s timing is not accidental. The company is arriving at a moment when US stablecoin regulation is crystallizing around the GENIUS Act, legislation designed to create clear federal frameworks for stablecoin issuers.
The key risk, as always with regulatory-dependent ventures, is that the remaining approvals never come. FDIC applications can stall, conditions can multiply, and political winds can shift. OpenReserve has $25 million and a marquee investor roster to fund the slog.