Freeport Markets – AI Trading Platform
Freeport Markets (freeportmarkets.com), founded in 2025, builds an AI-powered trading platform that converts trusted social and financial media into real-time market signals and actionable trade ideas for crypto, perpetual futures, equities, and pre-IPO shares, while unifying DeFi access with quantitative portfolio construction and optimized cross-chain execution.
- Core Focus: Agent-driven situational awareness and quantamental DeFi investing for self-custody users seeking hedge-fund-style information processing and execution without intermediaries.
Core Data Grid
| Funding Round | Lead Investors / Notable Backers | Total Raised (approx.) | HQ Location | Industry Sector | Estimated Team Size | Key Partners / Validation |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Seed (YC F25) | Y Combinator, Alliance DAO, Informed Ventures | $500K–$1.1M (primarily YC + strategic crypto investors) | New York, NY | DeFi / Crypto Infrastructure / Agentic Finance | 3 | Y Combinator (Fall 2025 batch); Alliance DAO network; founder-developed cross-chain smart order routing engine |
Freeport Markets Leadership & Structural Breakdown
Key Leadership:
- Lihong Wang, Co-founder & CEO: Former quantitative trader at Jane Street, IMC Financial Markets, and Akuna Capital (options and fixed income strategies). B.S. in Mathematics and Statistics with minor in Computer Science, Duke University. Developed the company’s novel cross-chain smart order routing engine for perpetual futures. LinkedIn
- Bryan Reed, Co-founder: Technical co-founder with experience at Huawei (HarmonyOS graphics engine) and Capital One. Previously founded and bootstrapped a software testing SaaS to six-figure ARR in college. LinkedIn
Primary Competitors:
- DeFi execution and smart routing platforms
- AI-driven trading signal and news-to-alpha tools
- Digital asset portfolio construction and yield optimization services
Core Use Cases & Market Problem:
- Active self-custody crypto and DeFi users who want diversified, factor-aware portfolios instead of concentrated BTC/ETH holdings.
- Traders seeking to convert real-time social/financial media catalysts and attention flows into inspectable, executable trade ideas without constant manual monitoring.
- Users needing best-execution routing across fragmented L1/L2 perpetual venues to reduce slippage and MEV while accessing audited yield opportunities on idle assets.
What Does Freeport Markets Do?
Freeport Markets acts as an AI analyst layer that scans trusted social and financial sources for market-moving signals, converts them into clear trade recommendations with evidence, and routes orders across decentralized exchanges for better pricing.
It also applies a quantitative framework (factors including momentum, value, and liquidity) to help users build diversified crypto portfolios and put idle holdings to work in screened DeFi protocols.
Target Customers & Adoption Context
Primary users are retail and self-custody crypto investors who want professional-grade tools for portfolio construction, yield capture, and catalyst-driven trading without custody risk or high centralized fees.
It removes the core frictions of fragmented DeFi interfaces, information overload from social media, manual cross-chain execution, and lack of rigorous diversification frameworks that leave most portfolios under-optimized and reactive.
Capital & Traction Signals
Seed funding from top-tier sources including Y Combinator (Fall 2025), Alliance DAO, and Informed Ventures.
Early platform traction includes scaling connected assets and cumulative trading volume into the tens of millions (public founder updates reference figures exceeding $50M cumulative volume with continued growth reported).
Founders left high-caliber quant trading roles and a successful bootstrapped SaaS to focus on the venture.
Tight three-person New York team emphasizes product velocity in a capital-efficient structure. Momentum aligns with rising retail interest in on-chain perps and agentic tools that synthesize narrative and data flows into decisions.
Investor Lens
In the 2026 capital cycle, Freeport sits at the intersection of maturing crypto markets, growing on-chain perpetual activity, and the shift toward agentic infrastructure that turns dispersed attention and alternative data into executable alpha.
Strong validation comes from Y Combinator’s selection and Alliance DAO’s crypto-native backing, reinforced by Lihong Wang’s direct experience at leading market makers and Bryan Reed’s systems-building background.
Visible early volume traction and a focused three-person team signal disciplined execution ahead of broader retail capital rotation into sophisticated DeFi strategies.
Key watchpoints from an allocator perspective include the challenges of scaling signal quality and reliability with a small team, plus regulatory uncertainty around AI-generated trading recommendations and DeFi tooling.
The combination of a proprietary cross-chain routing engine, quantamental screening methodology, and attention-to-execution pipeline creates a potential defensibility layer in execution quality and user retention among active traders.
Public signals support asymmetric upside if the platform captures meaningful share of retail flow seeking repeatable, evidence-based on-chain strategies amid expanding decentralized liquidity.
Last Updated: June 2026
Sources:
- Y Combinator company page: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/freeport-markets
- Forbes Councils profile (Lihong Wang): https://councils.forbes.com/profile/Lihong-Wang-CEO-Freeport-Markets/34478ec0-078d-4f0b-91f9-58defa522dee
- Alliance DAO launch details and founder statements
- LinkedIn company and founder activity (Freeport Markets, Lihong Wang, Bryan Reed)
- Startup tracking profiles (Tracxn / Startup Intros aggregates)
- Public founder updates on volume and product milestones (2025–2026)
