Tangible, a fintech platform that enables hardtech companies to access and manage debt financing, has raised a $4.3M seed round led by Pale Blue Dot, with participation from MMC, Future Positive Capital, Unruly, SDAC, Prototype Capital, and Aperture.
Hardtech is central to solving the biggest macroeconomic themes of our generation – the energy transition, compute buildout, transport, and reindustrialisation. BlackRock estimates $68 trillion of new infrastructure investment is needed by 2040 to meet demand. But hardtech’s funding path doesn’t fit neatly into the defined VC playbook. These companies need scalable, well-structured debt alongside equity. Private credit, now a $3.5 trillion market, is poised to fill this gap. But if it’s going to meet demand, lenders will have to dramatically increase the efficiency of how they deploy capital into these asset classes.
Despite hardtech’s global resurgence, financing hardtech companies efficiently can be difficult. Hard asset companies need significant funding, but most companies struggle to obtain scalable debt financing until they are deemed mature or “institutional-ready”. As a result, many earlier-stage companies fund their capex with expensive equity, slowing deployment, compounding dilution, and often jeopardising company survival. Conversely the best companies in this category are leveraging their capital intensity, as a strategic tool for growth.
Tangible was set up to solve this problem. Tangible’s AI-powered platform and finance experts standardise the data, documentation, and ongoing reporting that lenders need. This reduces underwriting time and cost for lenders, and enables founders to run structured facilities without building an in-house structured finance team.
“It is clear that most of the innovations shaping the future – from vehicles and data centres to robotics – are fundamentally physical. And, to enable efficient innovation they should not be financed by venture equity alone.” said Hampus Jakobson, General Partner at Pale Blue Dot. “Tangible’s solution opens up financing options for hard tech businesses, and we believe strongly in Will, Seb, and Ash’s vision to accelerate growth by bridging this financing gap.”
“Reindustrialisation, energy security, and the race for technological sovereignty in compute are driving unprecedented demand for physical assets. As hardtech companies scale at speed, investors need modern infrastructure to deploy capital just as fast. And legacy processes that are reliant on bespoke documentation and manual coordination no longer cut it, said William Godfrey, Co-Founder & CEO, Tangible.“ This is the exact problem we’re trying to solve with Tangible – we provide the financial infrastructure that makes hardtech easy to diligence for institutional credit to allow companies to raise asset-backed financing faster, and with less friction.”
Tangible will use the seed funding to expand its team and build deeper automation across collaboration, diligence, and reporting workflows, reducing transaction costs and accelerating time-to-close for both founders and lenders.
For hardtech companies facing capital constraints, Tangible offers the chance for debt over dilution or dissolution.
Tangible
Tangible is a software platform supported by structured finance experts that helps hardtech companies build more efficient capital stacks. Too many founders fund physical assets with expensive equity because institutional debt feels out of reach. We fix that. By standardising the reporting and documentation lenders need to deploy capital into hardware.
