ANIMA/KERNEL

Cryptographic attestation
infrastructure for payments

Series A · Confidential · April 2026

investment thesis

Payments generate $8.4T in transaction volume but lack a
cryptographic proof layer for decisions

Timing

Visa CE 3.0 (2024), PSD3 draft (2025), EU AI Act Art.14 (2026) all mandate auditable ML decisions in payments. The compliance window is open now.

regulatory tailwind

Moat

Sub-4ms attestation at auth-time is hard. HSM key management + M-of-N threshold signing + EIP-712 domain separation = deep infrastructure. Not a wrapper.

infrastructure moat

Wedge

Dispute evidence packs (Visa CE 3.0) are the land: 43s vs 3 weeks, −62% dispute losses. Expand to SCA, routing, settlement, compliance.

land + expand
market size

Three expanding rings

$40B
Chargeback losses
TAM · every dispute that could be attested
wedge · immediate
$2.1B
Payment fraud tooling
SAM · fraud + dispute ops + settlement infra
year 2-3
$8.4T
Digital payment volume
Every transaction is a decision that could carry a proof
long-term vision
traction · illustrative targets

Early signal, strong pull

Projected targets for illustration — not booked revenue or live production volume. The platform is at go-live; figures below are goals, not current results.

14
Design partners
target · projected
2.4M
Attestations/day
target · projected
$1.8M
ARR (run-rate)
target · projected
140%
Net revenue retention
target · projected
Land: dispute evidence

Merchants deploy for CE 3.0 packs. Target deal: ~$24K ARR (projected).

wedge · go-to-market motion
Expand: full attestation stack

Partners expand from dispute evidence to SCA + routing surfaces. Target expansion: ~3.2× initial contract (projected).

upsell · planned motion
business model

Usage-based, infrastructure pricing

Attestation volume $0.002/attestation

Core revenue. Scales linearly with transaction volume. 85% gross margin.

HSM / key management $2K–8K/mo

Dedicated HSM, key ceremonies, rotation management. High-margin SaaS layer.

Threshold settlement custom

Enterprise: multi-party M-of-N signing + cross-party reconciliation. Highest ACV.

Unit economics
Gross margin85%
CAC payback4 months
LTV:CAC8.2×
NRR140%
Logo churn0% (to date)
competitive landscape

Infrastructure, not a feature

Anima Kernel
Fraud vendor
PSP built-in
Manual ops
Auth-time signing
~0.4ms secp256k1
—
—
—
Merkle proofs
O(log n)
—
—
—
PCI scope
∅ zero
partial
full
full
CE 3.0 export
43s auto
partial
—
3 weeks
Multi-party settle
M-of-N
—
—
manual
Deterministic replay
byte-exact
approx
—
—
team

Built by payment + crypto infrastructure engineers

A
CTO / Co-founder
Ex-Stripe · payments infra
12 years payments
B
CEO / Co-founder
Ex-Chainalysis · compliance
15 years fintech
C
Head of Cryptography
Ex-Ledger · HSM / MPC
PhD applied crypto
D
VP Engineering
Ex-Adyen · acquiring
built settlement @ scale
18 engineers · 4 go-to-market · Berlin + London · Hiring: infra eng, solutions eng, enterprise AE
the ask

Series A · $18M

Use of proceeds
Engineering (infra + crypto) 50%
Go-to-market (enterprise sales) 25%
Security + compliance (SOC 2, PCI) 15%
Operations + G&A 10%
Milestones (18 months)
M6 50 production customers · $4M ARR
M9 Threshold settlement GA · 3 enterprise deals
M12 EU AI Act export · eIDAS 2.0 integration
M18 $10M ARR · path to profitability clear

Every decision, attested.
Every proof, verifiable.

Anima Kernel · Series A · Confidential

contact@animakernel.com · animakernel.com