Squads, known for its Solana-based multisig protocol, has raised $18 million in a strategic funding round to expand its recently launched stablecoin platform Altitude.

Solana Ventures led the funding round, with Coinbase Ventures, Haun Ventures, L1D, and others participating, Squads said Wednesday. The round was raised in a single tranche and structured as a priced equity round, Stepan Simkin, co-founder and CEO of Squads, told The Block. He declined to disclose valuation or whether any investors took board or observer seats in this round.

Squads began fundraising for this round last October and closed it in December, Simkin said. The raise brings Squads' total funding to $42.9 million. Notably, Haun Ventures, which invested in Squads in May last year, made an additional investment in this round, Simkin said.

Betting that businesses don't need banks anymore

Squads said it raised the new funding on a "simple bet" that businesses no longer need traditional banks and can run operations on stablecoins instead, which it argues is faster, cheaper, and easier than fiat rails.

"Businesses are better off running on stablecoins than on banks," Simkin said. "Solana is now mature enough to carry global business finance, regulators have caught up, and for the first time you can build a bank-grade platform on a genuinely new system."

Squads said its Altitude system enables businesses to transact 24/7 using stablecoins through a self-custodial wallet (the Altitude account), where user treasuries are held in stablecoins rather than fractional-reserve bank accounts. Traditionally, businesses rely on bank partnerships to hold funds and access payment rails, requiring new integrations and compliance processes for each market.

Since its public launch last December, Squads said Altitude has processed more than $200 million in payments for exporters, global agencies, crypto-native companies, and cross-border remote teams.

"The Squads team spent the last four years building the security infrastructure that most of the Solana ecosystem runs on," said Matthew Beck, head of Solana Ventures, referring to the Squads multisig protocol. "Stablecoins and programmable blockchains are rewriting how global finance works. This is the team with the technical depth and the vision to build the financial platform that sits on top of that shift. We believe Altitude will be how the next generation of global businesses runs their financial operations."

Squads acknowledged compliance and security as key concerns behind the limited adoption of stablecoins in business finance, and said Altitude addresses those concerns.

It said Altitude uses a compliance program that includes continuous sanctions screening, anti-money laundering checks, transaction monitoring, and know-your-business verification, processes similar to regulated fintech standards. This enables Altitude accounts to plug into payment service providers like Bridge and MoonPay for global coverage and competitive pricing, Squads said.

On competition, Simkin said existing players are either building software layers on top of banks or adding stablecoin support at the edges.

"Altitude is built on the convergence of programmable blockchains, stablecoins and agentic automations. This allows us to serve customers globally, help them move money faster and automate their workflows end-to-end," he said.

Squads currently employs 38 people and is hiring across marketing, sales, and compliance functions, Simkin said.

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