Tesseract

About Tesseract

Tesseract Group Oy is a financial technology firm specializing in the digital asset sector, headquartered in Helsinki, Finland. Founded in 2017 by Yichen Wu and Ilkka Salo, the company initially operated under the name WhaleLend before rebranding. Wu, who serves as the company's founder, previously gained experience at companies like Boston Consulting Group and Microsoft and co-founded another startup, EntoCube, before venturing into the crypto space. This background in finance and technology informed the creation of Tesseract, which aims to bridge institutional capital between traditional and digital asset finance.

The company's core business revolves around providing digital asset lending and yield-generation solutions to a global clientele that includes institutional investors, hedge funds, market makers, retail trading platforms, and private individuals. Tesseract operates on a B2B and B2B2C model, offering white-label solutions that allow partners like crypto exchanges, custodians, and wallet providers to integrate Tesseract's services into their own platforms via an API. This enables partners to offer yield products to their end-users, thereby attracting and retaining customers. Revenue is generated from these lending and yield services. The firm is regulated by the Finnish Financial Supervisory Authority (FIN-FSA) as a Virtual Asset Service Provider.

Tesseract's product suite is designed to help clients earn passive income on their cryptocurrency holdings. Key offerings include 'Lending' and 'Managed DeFi'. The Lending product provides loans to vetted institutional borrowers with a focus on risk management, employing a delta-neutral strategy to mitigate price volatility. The 'Managed DeFi' product offers exposure to decentralized finance opportunities through a diversified, multi-strategy approach that includes yield farming, liquidity provision, and staking, managed by Tesseract's experts. The company has secured significant financial backing, including a $25 million Series A funding round in June 2021, led by Augmentum Fintech with participation from notable investors like Coinbase Ventures and Sapphire Ventures.