about anima kernel

We build the proof layer
for payment decisions

Anima Kernel is a Berlin-based infrastructure company. We sign every fraud decision, authentication challenge, routing choice, and settlement batch with cryptographic attestations — creating tamper-evident records that survive disputes, audits, and regulatory scrutiny.

Founded 2024 · Berlin
22 people
Series A · $18M raised
01 · mission

Payment decisions should be provable,
not just logged

Logging tells you what happened. Attestation proves it. We believe every automated decision that moves money should carry a cryptographic proof — verifiable by any party, reproducible under dispute, and free of sensitive data.

Proofs, not promises

Traditional audit trails are database rows — mutable, deniable, scope-expanding. Attestations are signed commitments: tamper-evident by construction, zero PCI scope by design.

Infrastructure, not features

We don't compete with fraud vendors or PSPs. We sit underneath them, signing their decisions. The attestation layer is orthogonal to the decision layer.

02 · principles

How we build

Zero scope by default

No raw PAN, no CVV, no biometric templates, no cardholder PII. If it's sensitive, hash it. If it's unnecessary, drop it. PCI scope should be a design choice, not an accident.

Verifiable by counterparty

Every attestation we emit can be independently verified by any party — issuer, acquirer, regulator, court. No trust in Anima required. The math is the trust.

Deterministic replay

If we signed it, we can replay it. Same feature vector, same model weights, same seed → same output, byte for byte. Disputes become re-executions, not arguments.

Shape + color redundancy

Every state in our system carries both a color and a shape — never one alone. Accessibility isn't a feature; it's a constraint we design within.

Density over decoration

Our users are analysts, not tourists. We optimize for information density, keyboard-first navigation, and reading speed — not whitespace and illustration.

Archival permanence

Attestations outlive the systems that created them. Our format is self-describing, version-tagged, and independently parseable — designed for 10-year regulatory retention.

03 · team

Payment + crypto infrastructure engineers

22 people across Berlin and London. Backgrounds in payment processing, applied cryptography, financial compliance, and distributed systems.

A
CTO / Co-founder
Ex-Stripe · payments infrastructure
12 years payments
B
CEO / Co-founder
Ex-Chainalysis · compliance + analytics
15 years fintech
C
Head of Cryptography
Ex-Ledger · HSM, MPC, threshold sigs
PhD applied cryptography
D
VP Engineering
Ex-Adyen · acquiring + settlement
built settlement @ scale
E
Head of Product
Ex-Plaid · developer platforms
API-first product
F
Head of Compliance
Ex-N26 · PSD2, PCI DSS, AML
regulatory strategy
G
Principal Engineer
Ex-Cloudflare · distributed systems
low-latency infra
+14
Engineering + GTM
Berlin + London
04 · timeline

Company history

Q3 2024
Founded in Berlin
Two co-founders leave Stripe and Chainalysis to build attestation infrastructure for payments.
Q4 2024
Seed round · $4.2M
Led by infrastructure-focused fund. First 4 engineers hired. HSM integration begins.
Q1 2025
First attestation in production
Design partner (€800M GMV fintech) deploys fraud decision attestation. Sub-4ms capsule chain achieved.
Q3 2025
SOC 2 Type II + PCI DSS v4
Compliance certifications complete. Enterprise pipeline opens. 8 design partners onboarded.
Q1 2026
Series A · $18M
14 design partners, 3 live in production. $1.8M ARR run-rate. 2.4M attestations/day.
NOW · April 2026
Threshold settlement + EU AI Act export
M-of-N multi-party signing in beta. eIDAS 2.0 integration in development. Hiring across all functions.

Join us

We're hiring engineers, solutions architects, and enterprise sellers in Berlin and London.

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