Silicon Valley's new bank is a Columbus startup

Erebor Bank received its national charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in early February, less than four months after conditional approval and under a year from its initial application. It launched in early 2026 with $635 million in venture backing, making it one of the most heavily capitalized startup banks ever chartered — and the first new national bank charter of President Donald Trump's second term.

Why it matters

The U.S. banking system is starting to thaw after a prolonged deep freeze. New bank formation has been effectively stalled since the 2008 financial crisis — between 2010 and 2023, the country averaged fewer than six new charters per year, down from roughly 130 annually in the decade prior.

Erebor's swift approval signals a clear pivot in regulatory appetite:

• The regulatory shift: OCC Comptroller Jonathan Gould has cast Erebor as proof of a "dynamic and diverse" federal banking system, while FDIC Acting Chair Travis Hill has argued that the collapse in new bank formation is a key driver of the shrinking number of U.S. banks.
• The tech gap: Erebor aims to fill the vacuum left by Silicon Valley Bank's 2023 collapse — a bank that once served a huge share of U.S. venture-backed startups and specialized in tech and life sciences — targeting clients that traditional lenders often find too risky or too unfamiliar to underwrite.

The details

• Massive capital: Erebor launched with $635 million in venture capital funding. That's more than ten times a typical de novo bank raise and unusually large for a newly chartered national bank.
• The investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Lux Capital, 8VC, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale — a roster that has heavily backed defense-tech, AI infrastructure, and crypto over the last decade.
• The valuation: $4 billion in its most recent funding round — roughly 7x book value, in a sector where 1-2x is the norm.
• The Columbus HQ: The founders have deep Silicon Valley ties, but the bank is officially rooted in Ohio.

The strategy

Erebor isn't positioning itself as a conventional lender. It plans to integrate blockchain-based services to settle transactions 24/7 and is building products designed for a clientele most banks don't know how to serve:

• Credit lines backed by cryptocurrency or private securities.
• Compute loans to finance advanced AI chips and GPU clusters.
• Specialized underwriting for defense contractors, robotics firms, and advanced manufacturers whose collateral — think precision machine tools — doesn't fit neatly into traditional risk models.

The bank plans to sell many of its loans to other institutions, which may limit how exotic its book actually gets.

What to watch

Erebor faces a strict regulatory leash: the OCC is requiring a 12% tier-1 leverage ratio for its first three years of operations, well above what many established banks carry. Its chief risk officer — a Federal Reserve Bank of New York veteran — departed in January, just weeks before the charter was finalized, raising questions about how quickly the bank can scale complex underwriting.