A Brooklyn-based fintech building blockchain infrastructure for private credit has raised $13.25 million in seed funding, the company announced in mid-September, betting that a market that reached $3.5 trillion in 2025 still runs on outdated plumbing that smart contracts can fix.
Tare closed the round in March, according to Fortune, with Blockchain Capital leading, joined by Janus Henderson, Strobe Ventures, The Venture Dept, Neoclassic Capital and the Avalanche Foundation. The company declined to share its valuation. Angel investors included Aave CEO Stani Kulechov, Tether cofounder Phil Potter, and Privy CEO Henri Stern, among others.
At its core, Tare is constructing what it describes as an end-to-end platform linking loan originators with institutional investors through a shared ledger built atop the Avalanche blockchain. The system bundles three distinct applications: a loan origination tool that enforces credit policy and records standardized data on-chain, a management layer handling servicing and securitization workflows, and a digital hub where investors can discover and trade credit assets.
The pitch replaces fragmented legacy systems with a unified on-chain registry and modular smart contracts designed to execute loan sales and structured financings. Whether institutions hungry for yield will embrace blockchain rails over familiar intermediaries remains an open question.
CEO Kevin Miao brings credibility from his previous role running BlockTower Credit, a private credit strategy managing roughly $1.9 billion to $2 billion that already relied on on-chain infrastructure. Before BlockTower, he traded structured credit at Citigroup and studied at Harvard Business School. CTO Lucas Vogelsang cofounded Centrifuge, a tokenization platform in the same orbit, and worked at Taulia before its acquisition by SAP. COO Keerthi Moudgal led tokenized repo and bond issuance at JPMorgan's Kinexys, the bank's rebranded digital assets unit formerly known as Onyx.
That collective resume suggests Tare isn't a team learning traditional finance on the fly. They've navigated both worlds.
The capital will fund product development and hiring while Tare expands to more lenders and investors. A portion will support licensing efforts for Tare Credit LLC, the company's lending subsidiary. State filings show the unit holds a consumer installment license in Missouri and has registered in at least 25 states, including New York, California and Texas. The company's website lists NMLS license ID 2806954, and regulatory records indicate Tare Credit registered in Florida in March and appeared on Oklahoma's consumer credit roster by June.
Tare Credit is now originating unsecured personal loans to U.S. consumers, the company confirmed. Starting with consumer credit gives the platform transaction volume and standardized data flows while the team pursues institutional relationships that take longer to cultivate.
Blockchain Capital, a crypto venture firm founded in 2013, sees the opportunity as structural rather than incremental. General partner Aleks Larsen said Tare is "going after a generational opportunity to modernize how loan originators and investors connect." He told Fortune he sees no direct competitor in crypto today, though adjacent players include Figure, which operates blockchain-based loan infrastructure; Centrifuge, Vogelsang's former company; and Octaura, which digitizes institutional credit trading without blockchain.
Janus Henderson's participation signals institutional interest in tokenization beyond experimental pilots. The asset manager previously partnered with Anemoy and Centrifuge in 2024 on tokenized funds. Nick Cherney, Janus Henderson's head of innovation, noted that "private credit has grown enormously, but the data and settlement infrastructure behind it hasn't kept up."
Avalanche Foundation's involvement aligns with prior real-world asset deployments on the chain, including a collaboration between Centrifuge and Grove targeting up to $250 million in tokenized funds on Avalanche announced earlier this year.
The broader market context supports Tare's timing, if not its approach. Global private credit assets under management hit $3.5 trillion in 2025, according to a December report from the Alternative Credit Council and the Alternative Investment Management Association. PIMCO estimated in a June report that the U.S. addressable market could eventually reach $6 trillion to $8 trillion. That growth has strained systems built for smaller, slower markets.
"Credit is one of the largest markets in the world, yet the infrastructure supporting it remains fragmented and inefficient," Miao said in the announcement. Tare's team page lists six additional employees, including credit analysts and engineers.
Whether blockchain becomes the connective tissue for private credit or remains a niche experiment depends partly on execution by companies like Tare. The technology promises transparency, programmability and faster settlement. Traditional players counter that existing systems work well enough and regulatory clarity remains murky. Tare is betting the inefficiencies are real and the institutions will follow if the infrastructure proves itself reliable.
