Lombard Systems raises $4M to standardize financing for tokenized assets

DUBAI — Lombard Systems, a Dubai and New York startup building financing standards for tokenized assets, has raised $4 million across a pre-seed and seed round led by Ethereal Ventures, per a PR Newswire release.

The company, the trading name of Semiliquid Tech Labs Ltd, founded by Rico van der Veen, is developing Delivery-versus-Lock, a standard under which tokenized assets stay locked at the custodian while a lender takes an enforceable security interest over them. Zodia Custody is the custody partner, and the framework was developed with ISLA, the securities-lending trade body. The full standard publishes in Q1 2027, with a first institutional deployment promised by the end of 2026. Alps Capital, First Commit Capital, Veris Ventures and Atka joined the round.

The read: tokenized collateral fails today on a plumbing question, who controls the asset while it is financed, and Lombard is writing the answer as a standard rather than a product. If ISLA's membership adopts it, Dubai gets a piece of market infrastructure, not just another tokenization startup. Watch the custodian and lender names on the first deployment.