Infrared Finance Raises $14M in Series A, Boosting Berachain's Ecosystem
Infrared Finance, a liquid staking protocol incubated by the Berachain Foundation, has raised $14 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Citizen X, halo Capital, No Limit Holdings, NGC Ventures, and Selini Capital. This latest funding brings Infrared's total capital raised to $18.75 million.
Infrared began raising funds for its Series A round in November 2024 and closed it in January 2025. The round was structured as a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT), similar to Infrared's previous rounds. The startup also disclosed that its previous strategic funding round in June 2024, initially backed by Binance Labs, later saw additional investments from Hack vc and No Limit Holdings, bringing the total for that round to $2.25 million.
Infrared has created two liquid staking tokens (LSTs): iBGT and iBERA, which correspond to Berachain's native tokens BGT and BERA, respectively. With over $1.7 billion in total value locked (TVL), Infrared is currently the largest protocol on Berachain, contributing to the broader ecosystem's around $3 billion in TVL.
Berachain, an Ethereum virtual machine (EVM)-compatible Layer 1 blockchain, launched its mainnet and BERA token last month. However, the token has faced criticism and has dropped 57% since its launch, currently trading at around $6.30.
Michael Anderson, co-founder of Framework Ventures, stated, "As one of the lead investors in Berachain, we believe Infrared will play a major role in simplifying and increasing access to Proof of Liquidity for users in the Berachain community. We believe Infrared's protocol will unlock significant amounts of productive capital within the wider Berachain ecosystem while maximizing efficiency and yield, freeing builders on Berachain's framework to innovate in new ways."
Infrared currently has a 15-person team and is hiring for development and operations (DevOps) engineer and will soon begin recruiting for a head of decentralized finance (DeFi) and a head of Asia-Pacific (APAC).
