Tenor Raises $2.5M to Build On-Chain Lending for Institutions
The seed round, led by Variant, comes five months after a pre-seed and targets the $200 trillion fixed-rate market with a Morpho-based platform on Base.
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Québec City-based Tenor has closed a $2.5 million USD seed round led by Variant, with backing from Nascent, Prelude, Coinbase Ventures, Lattice, Very Early, and undisclosed angels. The round comes five months after a $2.5 million pre-seed.
Tenor is building a blockchain-based lending platform for asset managers and businesses. It runs on Morpho, a fixed-rate lending protocol on Ethereum, and is already live on Base, the Coinbase-developed layer-2 network. The startup plans to deploy on other blockchains soon.
“The global fixed-rate market is $200 trillion, and most of it still runs on legacy infrastructure,” Tenor said in a blog post. “Large segments trade in a non-standardized fashion, coordinated over phone calls and managed using spreadsheets. These are the markets with the most to gain from moving on-chain.”
Founded in 2025 by Hugo Boisselle-Morin, David Dallaire, and Pierre-Yves Gendron, Tenor targets asset managers already allocating digital assets on-chain, as well as lending desks and crypto-focused funds. The platform lets institutions borrow and lend stablecoins via smart contracts. Tenor does not take custody of user assets; collateral sits in Morpho’s non-custodial contracts.
Canada is off-limits for now. Tenor has geoblocked its product in the country while regulators work out the framework for such offerings, a spokesperson told BetaKit. The startup hopes to eventually serve Canadian clients.
The financing comes as traditional lenders remain cautious about crypto-backed loans. Toronto-based APX Lending, which received approval from the Canadian Securities Administrators, offers a different model – it takes custody of assets. Tenor’s non-custodial approach sidesteps that regulatory path but leaves its Canadian expansion contingent on rulemaking.
Variant, Nascent, and Prelude were also early investors in Morpho itself. The overlap suggests a bet on the broader fixed-rate lending infrastructure, not just one application.
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