Birch Hill Raises $4 Million Seed to Bring Farm and Apartment Loans Onchain

Birch Hill, a New York startup led by Goldman Sachs and BlackRock alumni, has closed a $4 million seed round to put American apartment, farm and energy loans on public blockchains. Multicoin Capital led the round, announced Wednesday, with ParaFi Capital, Castle Island Ventures and Nascent participating. The raise brings Birch Hill's total funding to $6.5 million.

The firm's ambitions sit at the intersection of two markets that rarely touch: private credit and decentralized finance. CEO Bhavin Vaid worked as a Goldman Sachs investment banking analyst, moved into private equity at Cerberus Capital Management, and co-founded crypto investment firm Halo Capital. Co-founder and COO Connor Flanagan spent more than four years at BlackRock, including on its Aladdin risk platform, before stints at Digital Currency Group and analytics firm Flipside.

How does Birch Hill actually operate?

The company runs three divisions. Its Vaults arm is an official curator on Morpho, the onchain lending protocol, where it assesses credit and sets risk parameters for vaults and markets. Its Strategies unit builds onchain credit products, including one called Birch Hill Absolute Value. Its Enterprise division has applied to FINRA for broker-dealer membership, which would let it place private credit offerings with verified accredited investors.

"Loan originators need new sources of capital, and onchain lenders need credit they can trust," Vaid said in a statement.

The longer-term plan is to securitize pools of U.S. multifamily, agriculture and energy loans designed to be held onchain within the U.S. regulatory framework. Birch Hill said it met with the SEC's Crypto Task Force in August as part of that effort. The firm's argument is straightforward: banks, insurers and other fiduciaries will only allocate to credit packaged in structures they recognize.

Who is building it?

The $4 million funds an eight-person team with deep DeFi engineering roots. Three hires come from vault platform Yearn: Brad Schlagel, who led development of Yearn v3, Ian Plosker and Alex Cornwell. Traver Normandi joins from risk management firm Gauntlet to lead business development.

The investor thesis rests on the structure of the private credit market itself. "Private credit is a fragmented, relationship-driven market, which makes it one of the clearest opportunities to build new financial infrastructure onchain," said Shayon Sengupta, general partner and co-head of venture at Multicoin.

What does this change for institutional adoption?

The raise lands as Washington warms to onchain finance. The SEC proposed Regulation Crypto Assets in August, a rule that would let projects raise money through token sales without full registration. Morpho, meanwhile, has gained traction with traditional players and powers Coinbase's fixed-rate USDC loans against Bitcoin.

For Birch Hill, the near-term operational consequence is regulatory sequencing. The FINRA broker-dealer application is the gate: without approved membership, the Enterprise division cannot legally place private credit with accredited investors, and the securitization roadmap stays theoretical. The Morpho curation business, by contrast, is live today and gives the firm a track record in onchain risk management while it waits.

The competitive risk is that larger tokenization efforts, backed by incumbent asset managers, reach institutional-grade private credit first. Birch Hill's bet is that curator credibility on Morpho plus FINRA approval gives it a head start in a market that still runs on relationships and phone calls.

The next milestone to watch is FINRA's decision on the broker-dealer application, which will determine when Birch Hill can begin placing its first private credit offerings with accredited investors.