OpenReserve Raises $25 Million Led by a16z to Build a "Never-Closing" Bank

A veteran from MoneyLion is starting a new venture, this time to create on-chain infrastructure.

Written by: angelilu, Foresight News

With $25 million in seed funding led by a16z crypto and a preliminary conditional approval for a national bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), OpenReserve's starting point is quite high for a company that was founded just a year ago.

A Bank That Never Closes

OpenReserve Bank, N.A. aims to embed blockchain settlement into a complete bank charter: accepting deposits, issuing loans, tokenizing deposits, providing digital asset custody through subsidiaries, and facilitating cross-border remittances using stablecoins.

The clientele consists of institutions and enterprises. The list of services outlined in the OCC approval includes treasury management, payment settlement, cross-border agency banking, banking as a service (BaaS) platforms, and digital asset custody, with the buyers being companies. The language on the official website states "connecting institutions with payment channels." The target market includes digital asset companies, stablecoin issuers, and trading institutions that currently have accounts scattered across various state banks, trust companies, and offshore entities.

The most noteworthy product line is rUSD (ReserveUSD) — a compliant stablecoin planned to be issued through the subsidiary ReserveUSD, LLC. The underlying technology is the self-developed Open Core platform, and the API examples provided on the official website show that a single transaction settlement takes 950 milliseconds, accompanied by ledger hash verification.

Team Background

The founder and CEO of OpenReserve is Dee Choubey (Diwakar Choubey). He founded the consumer fintech company MoneyLion in 2013, which went public via SPAC in 2021 and was acquired by cybersecurity company Gen Digital for $82 per share, approximately $1 billion in cash, on April 17, 2025, at which time the platform had 18 million users.

Dee Choubey candidly explained in the announcement why he is starting his second venture, "We spent twelve years integrating banking and payment services on infrastructure that did not belong to us, creating MoneyLion. We experienced various hardships and understood the dilemmas faced by innovators, ultimately realizing that you cannot fix banking from the top down. The infrastructure itself is the product, and it must connect the U.S. instant payment channels with a regulated blockchain ecosystem."

Richard Correia, another co-founder of OpenReserve, is the former president and CFO of MoneyLion, now serving as president and COO of OpenReserve — the two are original partners from MoneyLion.

The other four organizers and directors listed in the OCC filing are John Chrystal, David Schwed, Jame Sloan, and Soumya Basu. David Schwed serves as the Chief Technology Officer, with a security background from BNY Mellon and Robinhood; Jame Sloan serves as the Chief Risk Officer, having worked at the OCC for 21 years.

In terms of financing, the company completed a $25 million seed round, led by a16z crypto, with participation from Jump Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, Acrew Capital, Clocktower, Quona, AAF Management, and Zero Knowledge Ventures. The SEC's Reg D filing shows that over $24 million has been received. According to a16z partner Guy Wuollet, "We need a bank that is always online, always open, and always available. A bank that never closes."

Obtaining a License in Just 5 Months

OpenReserve submitted its application on April 13 and received approval on September 2, taking 4 months and 20 days in total. Previously, the approval process for establishing a new full-service national bank often took a long time. In contrast, blockchain lending institution Figure submitted its application for a full-service national bank in 2020 but withdrew it in 2023 after litigation and regulatory scrutiny, failing to obtain a license.

An important background factor is that the application window has changed. Jonathan Gould became the Comptroller of the Currency on July 15, 2025, reopening the long-stalled approval process for new banks. In October of the same year, he issued the first preliminary conditional approval for a new bank during his tenure to Erebor, and the consumer credit platform Upstart received conditional approval on July 23 of this year, while the UK fintech company Revolut and OpenReserve were both approved on September 3. Since 2025, the OCC has received about 40 applications for new banks and has approved 21 of them.

Another reason is that there are now standards to follow. The GENIUS Act limits stablecoin issuance to regulated entities, so the OCC no longer has to explore each application on a case-by-case basis. The person submitting the materials is not inexperienced either: OpenReserve's Chief Risk Officer just came from the OCC, where he worked for 21 years.

A $210 Million Threshold

The original approval document Corporate Decision #1389 issued by the OCC on September 2 includes a strict timeline.

Money is the first hurdle: after deducting startup and pre-opening expenses, the paid-in capital must not be less than $210 million, to be in place within 12 months; the opening must be completed within 18 months, or the approval will automatically expire. The Tier 1 leverage ratio must not be less than 12% for the first three years — this requirement is not specific to OpenReserve; Erebor received the same conditions, which are standard terms for this round of new bank approvals.

Personnel and business are also tightly controlled. Executive and director candidates, including the anti-money laundering officer, chief compliance officer, and chief information security officer, must receive prior approval from the OCC; if there are significant deviations in the business plan, they must be reported 60 days in advance and obtain written consent. The approval document also explicitly requires compliance with the GENIUS Act — and the wholly-owned stablecoin subsidiary responsible for issuing rUSD has yet to submit its application. Additionally, there are two independent hurdles: FDIC deposit insurance and Federal Reserve Bank stock.

The reference point is still Erebor. It received conditional approval on October 15, 2025, and officially opened on February 9, 2026, with a paid-in capital of $635 million at the time of opening — it took less than four months from approval to raising the funds to open. Its shareholder list includes Palmer Luckey and Peter Thiel, co-founders of PayPal and Palantir.

OpenReserve currently has $25 million on hand, leaving a gap of $185 million to the threshold, with a deadline of September 2027.