Fintech platform Tangible has raised $4.3m (£3.2m) in seed funding to build debt capital stacks for hardtech companies.

The round was led by Pale Blue Dot, with participation from MMC, Future Positive Capital, Unruly, SDAC, Prototype Capital and Aperture.

Tangible has an artificial intelligence-powered platform and a team of finance experts that standardise the data, documentation and ongoing reporting lenders need to finance hardtech companies, which has historically been difficult.

According to the company, the funding will be used to expand its team and build deeper automation across collaboration, diligence and reporting workflows, reducing transaction costs for lenders.

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“It is clear that most of the innovations shaping the future – from vehicles and data centres to robotics – are fundamentally physical,” said Hampus Jakobson, general partner at Pale Blue Dot. “And, to enable efficient innovation they should not be financed by venture equity alone. Tangible’s solution opens up financing options for hardtech businesses, and we believe strongly in Will, Seb and Ash’s vision to accelerate growth by bridging this financing gap.”

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According to Tangible, hardtech is central to solving macroeconomic challenges such as the energy transition and transport. BlackRock estimates that $68tn of new infrastructure investment will be needed by 2040 to meet demand.

“Reindustrialisation, energy security, and the race for technological sovereignty in compute are driving unprecedented demand for physical assets,” said William Godfrey, co-founder and chief executive of Tangible. “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.”

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