Squads Raises $18M to Build Business Finance on Solana & Stablecoins

NEW YORK, NY – April 29, 2026 – Squads, a financial infrastructure company building on the Solana blockchain, today announced it has closed an $18 million strategic funding round. The investment, led by Solana Ventures, brings the company's total funding to $42.9 million and is set to accelerate the development of Altitude, its financial operating system designed to run business finance entirely on stablecoin infrastructure.

The round saw participation from a roster of prominent venture firms, including Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, L1D, Collab+Currency, Electric Capital, Placeholder, Jump Crypto, and Robot Ventures. This significant capital injection signals growing investor confidence in a future where corporate treasuries and global payments bypass the traditional banking system in favor of the speed, efficiency, and global reach of blockchain technology.

The New Financial Operating System

For decades, business finance has been inextricably linked to legacy banking. Companies seeking to manage treasury or move money globally were forced to navigate a complex web of bank partnerships, each with its own compliance hurdles, fees, and geographical limitations. Squads argues that this paradigm is obsolete, thanks to the maturation of blockchains and the rise of stablecoins.

Altitude is built on this premise, treating money as programmable software. The platform separates treasury and payment functions from the fractional reserve banking system. Instead of holding funds in traditional bank accounts, Altitude clients hold their treasury in stablecoins. This enables instant, 24/7 settlement of funds at a fraction of the cost of wire transfers or ACH payments.

"This raise backs a simple idea: businesses are better off running on stablecoins than on legacy banking infrastructure," said Stepan Simkin, CEO of Squads, in the announcement.

Since its public launch in December 2025, Altitude has already processed over $200 million in payments for a diverse clientele that includes exporters, global agencies, crypto-native firms, and companies managing cross-border remote teams. These early adopters are drawn to the inherent advantages of stablecoin rails: global-by-default coverage, multi-currency support without costly conversions, and programmable controls that allow for sophisticated treasury management.

When funds need to move from the digital asset world back to traditional fiat currency, Altitude leverages a network of licensed Payment Service Providers (PSPs) like Bridge, MoonPay, Infinite, and Due. This hybrid model allows businesses to enjoy the benefits of on-chain finance while maintaining seamless connectivity to the global banking system.

Solana's Enterprise Ascent

The decision to build Altitude on Solana is a crucial element of the story, highlighting the blockchain's evolution into an enterprise-ready platform. While once known primarily for its high-speed decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT ecosystems, Solana's technical capabilities have attracted major players in the financial industry.

"The Squads team spent the last four years building the security infrastructure that most of the Solana ecosystem runs on," noted Matthew Beck, Head of Solana Ventures. "This is the team with the technical depth and the vision to build the financial platform that sits on top of that shift."

Solana's network architecture, capable of processing tens of thousands of transactions per second with near-instant finality, makes it uniquely suited for the high-throughput demands of global business finance. Following a period of instability between 2021 and 2023, significant network upgrades—including local fee markets to deter spam and a new high-performance validator client called Firedancer—have dramatically improved its reliability. Critically, no confirmed transaction on Solana has ever been reversed, providing the settlement assurance required for enterprise use.

This maturation has not gone unnoticed. Major financial institutions like Mastercard, Worldpay, and Western Union are already leveraging Solana for stablecoin settlement and cross-border payments. Visa also launched USDC settlement for US banks on the Solana blockchain in late 2025, further cementing its role as a foundational layer for modern finance. The Solana Foundation's Developer Platform (SDP) is actively simplifying the process for enterprises to build compliant financial products on the network.

Bridging the Trust Gap: Compliance and Security

Historically, mainstream business adoption of stablecoins has been hindered by two major concerns: a perceived lack of regulatory compliance and fears over asset security. Altitude was designed to address both of these challenges head-on.

On the compliance front, the platform integrates a proprietary engine that automates the rigorous checks expected of any regulated financial institution. This includes continuous sanctions screening, anti-money laundering (AML) checks, transaction monitoring, and Know-Your-Business (KYB) verification. This built-in compliance framework is designed to operate within the evolving global regulatory landscape, including the GENIUS Act in the United States and the Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation in the European Union. By embedding these controls, Altitude enables businesses to use stablecoins while adhering to strict financial laws.

Security is managed through a multi-layered approach. At the product level, businesses are equipped with programmable spending controls, granular user permissions, and configurable multi-factor authentication. The infrastructure layer is secured by Squads Protocol, the company's core smart account standard that already secures over $10 billion in assets across the Solana ecosystem. Finally, every transaction is immutably recorded and settled on the Solana blockchain, providing a transparent and auditable ledger.

A Competitive and Consolidating Market

Squads is entering a dynamic and increasingly competitive market. The value proposition of stablecoin-based business finance has attracted both nimble startups and financial behemoths. The strategic importance of this sector is underscored by recent high-profile acquisitions, including Stripe's $1.1 billion purchase of stablecoin infrastructure provider Bridge and Mastercard's $1.8 billion acquisition of payments platform BVNK.

These moves signal a broader industry consolidation and a race to bridge the gap between traditional payment rails and the burgeoning on-chain economy. Rather than viewing these players solely as competitors, Altitude integrates some, like Bridge, into its network of PSPs, creating a collaborative ecosystem that expands its global reach.

The ultimate validation comes from customers who have experienced the operational friction of the old system. "As we scaled, treasury and payments turned into an operational headache. Complexity and fees kept compounding," said Kash Dhanda, COO of Jupiter, a prominent decentralized exchange on Solana. "Altitude removed both." By abstracting away the complexities of both crypto and traditional finance, platforms like Altitude are making a compelling case that the future of business operations is on-chain.