Finoa

Overview

Finoa is a Berlin-based regulated digital-asset custody and staking platform for institutional investors, founded in 2018 by Christopher May and Henrik Gebbing. It provides qualified custody, staking and asset servicing to venture capital firms, crypto funds, corporates and high-net-worth individuals. In February 2023 the German supervisor BaFin granted it three licences covering crypto custody, crypto brokerage and proprietary trading in crypto-assets, making it a fully regulated German financial institution. Disclosed funding comprises a USD 22 million Series A led by Balderton Capital in 2021 and a USD 15 million round in 2024. Finoa reports more than 300 customers and over 90 employees.

Why this entity matters

Finoa tests a German proposition: that regulated infrastructure, not consumer distribution, is where a German crypto company can win. Three points support that. First, sequencing — Finoa obtained BaFin permissions early, a preliminary custody permission in January 2020 and full licences in February 2023, positioning it as a counterparty institutional allocators could use under German law rather than an offshore venue, with the permissions sitting under the German Banking Act. Second, customer type — a base of venture funds, crypto funds and corporates means its growth tracks institutional allocation rather than retail sentiment, a steadier DACH signal than exchange volumes, and the clients named in trade coverage — T-Systems, CoinList and Bankhaus Scheich — span enterprise, crypto-native and banking segments. Third, capital continuity — it raised across the 2021 peak, the 2023 trough and again in 2024, with existing investors re-participating each time.

Company history and product

Finoa was founded in Berlin in 2018 by Christopher May and Henrik Gebbing, both reported to have come from consulting backgrounds at McKinsey and Company. The core product is qualified custody: segregated storage with on-chain proof of ownership, for clients that cannot hold assets on a consumer-grade platform. On top of it the company built staking services, including Finoa Consensus Services, launched with liquid staking on StakeWise in May 2022; in-custody staking has covered protocols including Polkadot, NEAR, Mina, Flow, Oasis, SKALE, Axelar and Kyve. BaFin had granted a preliminary crypto-custody permission in January 2020. In April 2021 Finoa raised a USD 22 million Series A led by Balderton Capital, reported in euro terms as EUR 18.1 million, with Coparion, Signature Ventures and Venture Stars participating; the same year Sifted named it among its breakout fintechs to watch. A Porto engineering office was announced in January 2022, with around twenty staff expected there by year-end. On 28 February 2023 BaFin granted three licences — crypto custody, crypto brokerage and proprietary trading in crypto-assets — alongside a strategic round led by Middlegame Ventures, size undisclosed. That February the company also published a growth account stating that revenue had risen from EUR 550,000 to EUR 13 million in a year, a company-disclosed figure that is not independently verified. In January 2024 Finoa announced USD 15 million in strategic funding with new investors Maven 11 and Blue Bay Ventures and participation from all existing investors. Leadership was then broadened: Dr. Jörg Howein joined as chief product officer and managing director in August 2024 and Sven Niederheide as chief compliance officer and managing director in January 2025.

Role in the DACH startup and technology ecosystem

Finoa is DACH-native in the strictest sense: a German company holding German permissions and serving institutional clients from Berlin. Germany was among the first large European markets to create an explicit crypto-custody regime, introduced under the German Banking Act in January 2020, and Finoa built on it rather than relocating abroad. What the authorisation allows is specific: holding, storing and administering crypto-assets, or the private keys used to transfer them, for others; the brokerage and proprietary-trading permissions add the ability to intermediate and to deal on own account. That lets a German institution place assets with Finoa without leaving its supervisory perimeter. MiCA has applied to crypto-asset service providers since the end of December 2024, replacing national permissions with a single EU authorisation that passports across all Member States, and BaFin set a German transition window running to the end of 2025. Finoa has not published a separate MiCA authorisation announcement on its own press page as of this review. For German asset managers and corporates a domestically supervised custodian removes a compliance obstacle; Finoa sits alongside businesses such as Tangany in Munich. Its founders have appeared in Startuprad.io interviews discussing an ambition to build a crypto bank.

Selected relationships and affiliations

Co-founders: Christopher May, chief executive and managing director, and Henrik Gebbing. Other named executives: Dr. Jörg Howein, chief product officer and managing director from August 2024; Sven Niederheide, chief compliance officer and managing director from January 2025. Investors across disclosed rounds: Balderton Capital, Coparion, Signature Ventures, Venture Stars, Middlegame Ventures, Maven 11 and Blue Bay Ventures. Clients named in trade coverage include T-Systems, CoinList and Bankhaus Scheich. Staking partner: StakeWise. Regulator: BaFin. Entity: Finoa GmbH, Berlin, with an engineering site in Porto. The regulation now governing its market is catalogued separately at https://www.startuprad.io/entities/mica .

Startuprad.io relevance

Finoa is a Startuprad.io interview guest and sits in the Berlin FinTech and digital-asset cluster of the entity graph. It connects the German crypto-custody permission regime to a named, licensed, still-operating company, which anchors the MiCA entity and coverage of institutional digital-asset infrastructure in DACH. Four posts are recorded against it: a founder interview, two pieces on blockchain investing and stablecoins, and the 2022 DACH FinTech review.

Public source context

Funding, headcount, customer counts and leadership appointments come from Finoa's press page https://www.finoa.io/press . Funding and licensing are corroborated by Balderton Capital https://www.balderton.com/news/finoa-the-digital-asset-platform-for-institutional-investors-and-corporations-raises-22m-series-a/ , by EU-Startups, by CoinDesk https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/02/28/crypto-custodian-finoa-gets-license-approvals-from-german-regulator-bafin and by Finextra. Client and founder-background details are reported by Crowdfund Insider. The MiCA framework is taken from BaFin's MiCAR pages https://www.bafin.de/EN/Aufsicht/MiCAR/MiCAR_node_en.html . The revenue figure is company-disclosed and not independently verified. A reported acquisition of the brokerage Nonco could not be corroborated by any named source and is omitted.

Startuprad.io coverage of Finoa

Finoa appears in the following Startuprad.io interviews, analysis and long-form profiles.

Meet Finoa, They Want to Build a Crypto Bank — Founder Interview
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 27 August 2026
Coverage type: Interview
https://www.startuprad.io/post/meet-finoa-they-want-to-build-a-crypto-bank-founder-interview

Fintech Trends 2022 — Germany, Austria, and Switzerland - Fintech Review by Startuprad.io
Published: 24 December 2022
Last updated: 26 August 2026
Coverage type: Quarterly Review
https://www.startuprad.io/post/fintech-review-2022-germany-austria-and-switzerland

Inside of the Mind of a Blockchain Investor
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 14 August 2026
Coverage type: Analysis
https://www.startuprad.io/post/inside-of-the-mind-of-a-blockchain-investor

The Digital Euro and Why Stable Coins Matter — Founder Interview
Published: 15 March 2026
Last updated: 14 August 2026
Coverage type: Interview
https://www.startuprad.io/post/the-digital-euro-and-why-stable-coins-matter-founder-interview

About this record. This is the public Level 1 layer of Startuprad.io's entity intelligence architecture. Startuprad.io's deeper entity intelligence may include extended profiles, verified relationships, source trails, historical development, monitoring, news signals, custom entity sets, and analytical relationship mapping. These deeper layers are available through Startuprad.io's research, intelligence, and enterprise services.

Need deeper entity intelligence? Startuprad.io provides extended profiles, monitored entity sets, relationship analysis, source-backed research, and custom intelligence services for companies, investors, and institutions. → https://www.startuprad.io/become-a-partner

About Startuprad.io
Startuprad.io is a European B2B media, data and intelligence platform. It provides structured entity and ecosystem data, source-backed research, datasets and AI/training-data solutions, as well as strategic visibility and access to a professional European audience of founders, investors, executives and B2B decision-makers.

Organizations use Startuprad.io for intelligence and research, structured data and AI applications, executive and company positioning, and trusted B2B reach across Europe.

Canonical record: https://www.startuprad.io/entities/finoa