Foundation Devices, a bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturer, has announced it has raised $2 million in a seed round led by early-stage venture fund Bolt. Along with the round, Tyler Mincey, a partner at Bolt who previously worked at Apple, will join the Foundation board.
“Foundation is building the open hardware foundation for Bitcoin and a decentralized internet,” the manufacturer stated in the announcement. “We believe that a new internet, powered by open-source software, must run on open hardware. Our goal is to build a new category of sovereign computing to serve as an open platform for development of a decentralized internet.”
The hardware wallet manufacturer began shipping its first product, Passport, last month. With the seed round, Foundation plans to improve Passport with firmware updates and design enhancements and launch a companion software for the product.
In addition, the company has started expanding its team, which up to this point consisted only of its four cofounders. Foundation is looking for engineers in the software and mechanical fields, designers, and people to staff customer support and social media.
Existing investors Warburg Serres, Fulgur Ventures and Inflection also participated in the seed round, along with new investors Third Prime, Massachusetts Avenue Capital, Unpopular Ventures and Deep Ventures.
Foundation Devices CEO Zach Herbert has a stated focus on providing open-source hardware wallets, aiming to empower individuals to use and store bitcoin while maintaining their sovereignty. According to Herbert, Foundation’s Passport is assembled in the U.S. and based on open-source code from Coldcard and Trezor.
