Hypernova, a proprietary trading platform built on Hyperliquid, has raised $3 million in pre-seed funding as it looks to expand the category of funded crypto trading.

Lemniscap led the pre-seed round, with participation from Very Early Ventures, CMS Holdings and Pivot Global, Hypernova said Thursday. Angel investors from the Hyperliquid ecosystem, including Maximilian Fiege, co-founder of Native Markets, "Ericonomic" of Kinetiq, "Huf" of Pear Protocol, and Kirby Ong, Noel Tan, and "Velocity," co-founders of HypurrCollective, also joined the round, Hypernova co-founder and CEO Anar Bayramov told The Block.

Notably, the HypurrCollective co-founders joined the round through their group on Echo, the onchain capital-raising platform founded by Jordan "Cobie" Fish and recently acquired by Coinbase for $375 million, Bayramov said.

Hypernova was founded last September and began fundraising at the same time, Bayramov said, adding that the round closed in mid-October and was oversubscribed by three times.

The round was structured as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE) with token warrants, Bayramov said, declining to disclose the valuation.

Lemniscap took a board observer seat as part of the funding round, Bayramov added.

What is Hypernova?

Hypernova is building what it describes as a "trustless" prop trading firm. The platform says it uses smart contracts to automate "instant" trader payouts and settle trader activity onchain with transparent rules and verifiable execution logic.

Bayramov said Hypernova wants to address some of the problems that exist in traditional retail-focused prop trading firms, where payout processes are often opaque and profitable traders can sometimes become a liability for the business itself.

"Retail-focused prop firms operate fully on a B-book model, meaning they don't take trades to market," Bayramov said. "So if their traders make money, the firm has to pay out from its own balance sheet (losing them money). Hence, having a lot of good traders becomes a liability, and these firms end up banning or restricting them."

Bayramov says Hypernova's approach is different because it can dynamically decide whether to take trader positions to market depending on trader quality and available trading data.

"If a trader on Hypernova is 'A-booked', we incur losses when they lose (as we're taking their trades to market)," Bayramov said. "If a trader is 'B-booked,' meaning we don't have enough trading data on them, or we've evaluated that they're not a strong trader, then we don't take their trades to market and don't lose money when they lose."

'The vision is big'

Hypernova currently operates in closed alpha. Since launching the alpha on May 1, the startup says it has onboarded 250 traders, funded more than 20 traders, and paid out over $30,000. Hypernova plans to publicly launch its platform within the next two months, Bayramov said.

Notably, part of the $3 million pre-seed funding will be used to support trader payouts. Bayramov said $1 million from the raise has been allocated to the payout reserve, which the platform plans to continuously replenish using future revenues. The remaining $2 million will be used to expand the team and prepare the platform for public launch.

In the current alpha stage, Hypernova generates revenue from trader "assessments," which are one-time fees traders pay to qualify for funded accounts after passing evaluation requirements.

Over time, the startup expects to generate additional revenue by trading alongside successful traders.

"As we collect sufficient data on traders, we will start trading/A-booking, which will generate trading profits for us," Bayramov said. "We will release more products in the future to expand revenue lines."

Hypernova competes with existing crypto-focused prop trading firms, including Breakout, which was recently acquired by crypto exchange Kraken, as well as HyperPnL, Propr, and Upscale Trade.

London-based Hypernova currently employs seven people and plans to hire a quantitative researcher and developer over the next three months, Bayramov said.

Bayramov previously led decentralized finance investments at RockawayX, including early backing of Breakout, while co-founder and CTO Nijat Bakhshaliyev was previously a senior engineer at Coinbase and Citi.

Bayramov acknowledged that the firm still has a long road ahead.

"The vision is big, and we're not going to pretend otherwise. Attracting world-class traders, building the tech, designing the right incentive structures — none of this is easy, and we're early in all of it," Bayramov said. "If we get the incentives right and the product right, there's a path where Hypernova becomes a globally distributed trading firm that rivals the biggest names in the industry. That's the bet we're making."

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