From Idea to Raising $1M+ In Eight Weeks: Inside Arbitrum’s First Mentorship Cohort

Earlier this year, the Arbitrum Foundation ran the first full cohort of the Arbitrum Mentorship Program, an eight-week, equity-free accelerator built for early-stage teams building the next generation of products in the programmable economy. The idea was straightforward: take strong founders, give them direct access to the mentors, investors, and ecosystem partners that usually take months to reach, and help them get to the point where they can ship, launch, and raise.

Ten teams made it through to Demo Day. Between them, they raised more than $1M over the course of the program, shipped on Arbitrum One and Robinhood Chain, and four walked away with a share of the $100,000 prize pool. Here is how the eight weeks went.

By the numbers

• 902 applications from every major region
• 13 teams selected at 1.4% acceptance rate; 10 teams made it to the Demo Day
• $1M+ raised by cohort teams since the start of the program
• 5 teams launched on Robinhood Chain testnet or mainnet
• 40+ investor introductions made ahead of Demo Day
• 25+ VCs in the room on Demo Day
• $100,000 prize pool awarded across four winners

Meet The Cohort

The first cohort brought together 13 ambitious teams across five different verticals: tokenization, DeFi infrastructure, payments, consumer, and agentic finance. While teams were early-stage, founders arrived with successful startup exits in the past or deep operating experience. Seven of the thirteen are new to Arbitrum, having previously built elsewhere or still in pre-deployment. That was intentional: the program is designed to attract exceptional founders into the ecosystem, not just accelerate those already building within it.

Cohort 1 was early stage, but not inexperienced.

The ten teams that went through to Demo Day:

• Tilt Protocol: an operating system for tokenised RWA hedge funds, turning quant strategies into deployable onchain funds.
• Kustodia: a safety layer for high-value transactions, with real onchain escrow.
• T3tris: vault infrastructure that lets asset managers create vaults and deploy across strategies.
• Carbon: an onchain perps platform expanding into RWA and TradFi instruments.
• Bond Credit: credit infrastructure for autonomous AI agents, with onchain credit scoring and credit vaults.
• Prism: a consumer superdapp combining an AMM, launchpad, prediction markets, and perps.
• Capa: payments infrastructure for cross-border flows.
• Stealth: a composable proactive AMM DEX with HFT grade liquidity.
• LayerV: an options DEX on Arbitrum.
• Twyne: a universal credit delegation layer that unlocks unused borrowing power across lending markets.

Sessions and Mentorship

Over eight weeks, teams sharpened their positioning, strengthened their products, built investor relationships, and moved toward product launch.

The first month focused on getting teams investment-ready, helping founders refine their narrative, fundraising strategy, tokenomics, partnerships, go-to-market, and pitch. The second month focused on putting those foundations to work through hands-on clinics, deep dives with the Arbitrum Foundation and Offchain teams, and direct investor introductions, culminating in Demo Day.

Throughout the program, founders also had regular 1:1 access to ecosystem teams, mentors, investors, and partners to work through real challenges, get direct product feedback and accelerate their path to launch.

What Builders Shipped

Several teams hit major milestones throughout the program, moving from testnet to mainnet, launching new products and features on Arbitrum, and sharpening their positioning and go-to-market strategy.

Carbon shipped across multiple fronts in eight weeks. The team moved CFDs from private to open beta after reaching 400+ users, launched a live solver with a TradFi broker and BitGo as custodian, and secured $1M in committed capital for its CLP with another $2.5M in the pipeline.

LayerV made key progress toward launch, securing two market makers to provide liquidity across its order book and RFQ layer, onboarding its first licensed U.S. asset manager for its vaults, and completing V1 of its risk, trading, and liquidation engines.

Capa made strong progress across product and partnerships, growing volume 150% month over month and signing a key commercial deal. The team also added support for Robinhood Chain and expanded its stablecoin offering with USDC and USDT alongside MXNB.

Tilt and T3tris made strong progress building for asset managers throughout the program. Tilt onboarded seven pilot fund managers and launched AI Tilt, while T3tris grew its curator community to 50+ and shipped on Arbitrum and Robinhood Chain.

Kustodia and Bond Credit brought trust-critical infrastructure into production. Kustodia launched private and agentic escrow with USDC and MXNB, while Bond Credit shipped its watchtower and grew TVL 10x to .

Twyne expanded its collaboration across the ecosystem. Arbitrum One is ready for launch, Morpho is in audit, and Lido has signed on for a pilot. Together, these collaborations are helping bring both sides of the lending market together for credit delegation.

Demo Day & Winners

Cohort One closed with Demo Day on 7 July 2026, where all ten teams pitched to a room of investors and partners for a share of the $100,000 prize pool.

More than 60 investors’ introductions had been made for cohort teams in the lead up to Demo Day, and over 25 VCs turned out on the day itself, alongside ecosystem partners and mentors from across the program. The feedback from VCs was that the cohort showcased a very high level of quality and potential.

Four teams took home the $100,000 prize pool: Carbon, LayerV, T3tris, and Capa. The winners cut across the stack, from perps and options to vault infrastructure and payments, and two of the four are building on Robinhood Chain.

What's next

Demo Day marks a milestone for the cohort, but our work with these teams continues. We’ll stay closely involved as they build, launch, and raise, connecting them with the investors, partners, and resources they need along the way.

The goal of the Arbitrum Mentorship Program is to help early-stage teams build and launch category-defining financial products for the programmable economy.

And we’re just getting started. Cohort Two is coming soon.