Crypto & web3 startups in San Francisco

Mike Belshe & Ben Davenport

Founded 2013; pioneered multi-signature institutional crypto custody with a decade-long unblemished security record; ~4,600+ institutional clients and ~$100B assets under custody. IPO'd January 2026 (first p...

Jack Dorsey & Jim McKelvey

Founded 2009 as Square; HQ in Oakland. Operates Square merchant payments, Cash App (57M+ active users) and TIDAL, with a deep Bitcoin strategy — held ~8,997 BTC corporate treasury (Mar 2026) and rolled out m...

Brian Armstrong & Fred Ehrsam

Founded 2012 in SF; the largest U.S. crypto exchange and custodian, public on Nasdaq (COIN) since 2021 and added to the S&P 500 in 2025. Went 'remote-first' with no HQ in 2021 (paid ~$25M to exit its SF leas...

Vlad Tenev & Baiju Bhatt (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2013 in Menlo Park; commission-free trading of stocks, options, ETFs and crypto. Public (Nasdaq: HOOD) since 2021; joined the S&P 500 in September 2025 with a market cap around $98B mid-2025. Crypto ...

Nikil Viswanathan & Joe Lau (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2013; leading Web3 developer infrastructure — node APIs, rollups-as-a-service, smart wallets, gasless transactions and DeFi primitives — often called the 'AWS of web3.' Decacorn valued at $10.2B (202...

Diogo Mónica & Nathan McCauley

Founded 2017; the first U.S. federally chartered crypto bank (OCC national trust charter), providing institutional custody, staking, trading and settlement. Valued at ~$4.2B (backers include a16z, GIC, Goldm...

Mo Shaikh & Avery Ching (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2021 by former Meta Diem/Libra engineers; develops the Aptos Layer-1 blockchain (Move language, high throughput). Raised ~$350M (a16z, Jump, FTX Ventures, Franklin Templeton, Circle Ventures). Direct...

Evan Cheng, Sam Blackshear, George Danezis, Kostas Chalkias & Adeniyi Abiodun

Founded 2021 by ex-Meta Novi/Diem engineers; builds the Sui Layer-1 blockchain and Move-based infrastructure for Web3 apps. Reached a $2B valuation (2022) having raised ~$336M (FTX Ventures, a16z, Jump). [FL...

Brandon Millman, Francesco Agosti & Chris Kalani

Founded 2021; the dominant multichain self-custody crypto wallet (Solana-first, now multichain), with ~15M+ active users and ~$20B annual trade volume. Raised a $150M Series C at a $3B valuation (January 202...

Chris Larsen & Jed McCaleb

Founded 2012; enterprise crypto payments and infrastructure built around the XRP Ledger, plus the RLUSD stablecoin. In 2025 spent ~$2.45B on acquisitions — Hidden Road ($1.25B prime brokerage, closed Oct 202...

Anatoly Yakovenko & Raj Gokal (Indian-origin co-founder)

Founded 2018 in SF; core developer of the Solana Layer-1 blockchain, a high-throughput proof-of-stake chain (mainnet 2020) built on the novel Proof-of-History mechanism. ~250 employees across six continents;...

Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz & Chris Dixon

a16z (founded 2009) runs a16z crypto, the world's most influential crypto/Web3 venture arm, led by Chris Dixon. Its four crypto funds held ~$9.5B AUM (2025); its first fund returned a 5.4x net DPI. Raising a...

Dan Morehead

Founded 2013; the first U.S. institutional asset manager focused exclusively on blockchain, spanning venture, liquid-token and yield strategies. Long-standing early backer across the ecosystem; in 2025 retur...

Matt Huang & Fred Ehrsam

Crypto-native VC founded 2018 by ex-Sequoia partner Matt Huang and Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam; among the most respected research-driven crypto funds (backer of Uniswap, Phantom, Optimism and more). In 2...