Lombard Systems raises $4M to standardise financing against tokenised assets

Lombard Systems has raised $4 million in pre-seed and seed funding led by Ethereal Ventures, with Alps Capital, First Commit Capital, Veris Ventures, Atka and others participating. Rico van der Veen is co-founder and CEO. The company was previously known as SemiLiquid and operates from offices in Dubai and New York.

It builds the Delivery-versus-Lock standard, a technical and legal framework that lets institutions use tokenised and digital assets as collateral without moving them out of their existing securities accounts. Use cases include lending against tokenised money market funds and stocks, securities lending by pledge and initial margin for uncleared derivatives.

No customers are named. The company expects a first institutional deployment by the end of 2026 and the full standard in the first quarter of 2027. The money funds legal opinions in the US, England and Wales and five more jurisdictions, integrations and hiring.