Santander-backed venture firm Mouro Capital has closed its third fund at $400 million, doubling down on startups that sit at the crossroads of AI, blockchain and traditional finance. The London-based investor says the new vehicle will back companies rebuilding payments, lending, insurance, compliance, capital markets and wealth management around software, automation and programmable money.
The raise — which again includes backing from Santander — takes Mouro’s total capital commitments to more than $1 billion since the firm launched in 2015. According to reporting from Tech Funding News, Mouro has already deployed capital from the new fund into at least seven companies, including ElevenLabs and Sakana AI, and is explicitly targeting “AI-native interfaces, stablecoins, and decentralized finance” as core building blocks for next-generation financial services.
This isn’t surface-level blockchain marketing. Mouro’s portfolio includes M^ZERO, described by the firm as “decentralised stablecoin infrastructure that enables institutions to seamlessly transfer value,” signaling a continued appetite for crypto plumbing — not just AI-wrapped fintech. Other coverage (via Pathfounders) shows the firm is actively looking at governance, risk and compliance, capital markets, wealth management, payments infrastructure and stablecoins — categories that point to a future financial stack that’s both AI-mediated and blockchain-aware.
The institutional reasoning is straightforward: as advisory, compliance and trading workflows become machine-assisted, the rails that move, settle and verify value must become programmable and auditable. Mouro’s bet appears to be that AI will reshape the interface layer of finance while blockchain and stablecoin infrastructure remake settlement, custody and transfer beneath it.
The broader market seems to be aligning with that thesis. A few funding items worth noting: Catena Labs disclosed an $18 million seed round led by a16z crypto (not $30 million as some earlier reports suggested) to build what it calls an AI-native regulated financial institution. And Accel led a $75 million Series A for Viktor, an “AI coworker” operating inside Slack and Teams that reportedly hit a $15 million revenue run rate within ten weeks.
Taken together, Mouro’s $400 million close reads less like a routine fundraise and more like an institutional vote that the next class of fintech winners will be forged where AI automation, digital-asset infrastructure and regulated financial distribution overlap. For crypto builders and investors, that overlap looks set to be the battleground for the next wave of institutional product innovation.
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