About Erebor
Erebor was founded in 2025 by Palmer Luckey, the founder of Oculus VR and defense technology company Anduril Industries, together with Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of Palantir Technologies, with backing from Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Lonsdale's 8VC, and Haun Ventures, among others. The bank was conceived largely as a response to the March 2023 collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which had served as a primary banking relationship for a very large share of U.S. technology startups and venture capital firms; Luckey's own companies had banked with SVB, and its failure left many technology, crypto, and defense-sector companies searching for a bank both willing to serve their sometimes higher-risk business models and sophisticated enough to understand their needs.
Erebor Bank, N.A. is a fully digital, branchless national bank headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, with administrative offices in New York and Newport Beach, California, explicitly built to serve companies in the crypto, artificial intelligence, defense, and manufacturing sectors, along with payment service providers, investment funds, and trading firms, market segments the founders argue traditional banks often decline to serve due to perceived regulatory or reputational risk. The bank received conditional preliminary approval for a national charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in October 2025, unusually rapid regulatory approval process relative to typical timelines for a de novo bank charter application, and secured final approval to begin operating in February 2026, alongside FDIC deposit insurance approval; the bank's plans include U.S. dollar stablecoin deposits, crypto-collateralized lending, and traditional banking services tailored to the "innovation economy." The unusually rapid regulatory approval process and the founders' close political ties to the Trump administration drew public criticism from Senator Elizabeth Warren, who characterized it as preferential treatment for politically connected billionaires and warned of taxpayer-funded bailout risk, criticism Erebor's backers have disputed. By mid-2026 the bank reported roughly $4 billion in deposits and was reportedly in talks to raise new funding at a valuation of $8 billion or more, roughly double its December 2025 valuation of $4.35 billion.
