When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023, the companies building America’s hardest technology lost more than a counterparty — they lost the only institution that understood them. The banks that remained underwrite to legacy patterns: they do not know how to value a GPU cluster, lend against a Department of Defense contract, or settle a payment at 2 a.m. on a Sunday. Capital-intensive companies in AI, defense, crypto, and advanced manufacturing were left choosing between neobanks renting someone else’s balance sheet and incumbents who price what they cannot understand as risk. The industries rebuilding American hard power had no bank that spoke their language.
A national bank, built for the builders.
Erebor is a federally chartered, FDIC-insured national bank purpose-built for the innovation economy. Granted its full national charter in February 2026 — after conditional OCC approval in October 2025 and FDIC insurance within two months — Erebor opened with $635 million in capital and owns its regulated balance sheet outright. The offering matches how its customers actually operate: insured business deposits, ACH and wire rails, stablecoin payment infrastructure with 24/7 settlement, and specialized lending against the collateral frontier companies actually hold — GPU clusters, government contracts, and digital assets. Within six months of opening, Erebor held $4.6 billion in deposits from the companies building AI-powered factories, defense systems, and orbital manufacturing.
More Thoughts From the Team at BVVC:
“Every industrial revolution has required a financial system willing to underwrite it. The railroads had their banks. The semiconductor era had theirs. But the companies rebuilding the West’s hard-power industrial base — the reactor builders, the munitions manufacturers, the AI infrastructure companies — have been asked to finance 21st-century capital intensity through institutions that stopped understanding technology decades ago. SVB’s collapse did not create this gap. It exposed it.
This is a blind spot we know intimately, because we live it alongside our portfolio: brilliant Teams with signed government contracts and real hardware who cannot get a working capital facility, because no incumbent credit committee knows what a DoD contract or a GPU cluster is worth. Erebor underwrites what the legacy system cannot see. A real charter, a real balance sheet, and a bank that treats the innovation economy as its core business rather than an exotic exception.
Deterrence is an industrial project, and industrial projects run on credit. The financial infrastructure behind American frontier technology should be as sovereign, as modern, and as ambitious as the technology itself. Erebor is that infrastructure — and its success compounds the success of every company we back.”
“You can think of us like a farmers’ bank for tech. I think most farmers’ banks won’t claim that they’re the best bankers in the world, but they do understand farmers.”
– Palmer Luckey, Founder