Squid Raises $6M to Scale Cross-Chain Infrastructure With Ripple Backing
Squid, a cross-chain routing and consumer infrastructure provider, raised $6 million in a new funding round backed by Ripple, Dialectic, Borderless, Scenius Capital, Altos, and Arche Capital, along with angel investors from Axelar, Ledger, Polymer, Enso, and additional ecosystem teams. The company said the capital will fund an expansion of its consumer product suite built on top of its existing cross-chain infrastructure.
The round positions Squid as one of the better-capitalized independent routing layers in the multi-chain stack.
What Squid Does
Squid provides cross-chain routing infrastructure that allows users and applications to swap assets and interact with protocols across multiple blockchains in a single transaction. The protocol sits on top of Axelar, a general-purpose cross-chain communication network, and routes liquidity across chains including Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL).
The consumer product angle in this raise signals a shift from purely developer-facing tooling toward direct end-user interfaces, a direction several cross-chain teams have pursued since mid-2024 as raw infrastructure margins compressed.
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Ripple’s Role and Investor Mix
Ripple’s participation carries strategic weight. Ripple, the company behind XRP (XRP), has positioned itself as an infrastructure investor across settlement and interoperability layers. Its backing of Squid follows a broader pattern of corporate treasuries and blockchain foundations deploying capital into routing and liquidity infrastructure, rather than application-layer tokens.
The presence of Dialectic, a cryptocurrency-focused fund with a history of early-stage infrastructure bets, alongside angel participants from Ledger and Polymer, suggests the round drew from both institutional and founder-operator networks. Borderless and Scenius Capital round out a syndicate that spans geographic and strategic profiles.
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Background
Cross-chain infrastructure funding cooled sharply through 2023 and 2024 as bridge exploits damaged sector credibility and total value locked across interoperability protocols fell.
The Nomad bridge lost roughly $190 million in August 2022, and Ronin lost $625 million in March of that year, events that pushed institutional capital away from the category. Squid’s ability to raise at this stage, with a named institutional syndicate, points to a partial rehabilitation of the interoperability investment thesis as multi-chain usage volumes recovered through late 2025 and early 2026.
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What Comes Next
Squid’s stated focus on consumer products will test whether cross-chain routing can acquire end users directly, rather than relying entirely on aggregator and wallet integrations to drive volume.
The Axelar connection gives Squid access to a growing list of supported chains, which matters as new Layer-1 and Layer-2 ecosystems compete for liquidity. Investors and protocol teams will watch whether the product expansion translates into measurable daily active user growth within the next two quarters.
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