Omni, a startup that allows you to store and rent your possessions, raises $25M Series B; Ripple execs invested an undisclosed amount of XRP tokens in the round
Context & Ripple Effects
In early 2018, storage-and-rental startup Omni pulled in a $25M Series B, and the notable wrinkle was the currency: Ripple executives invested an undisclosed amount of XRP tokens directly into the round, putting crypto on the cap table of a physical-logistics business.
The XRP-for-equity move wasn't isolated — months later Blockchain Capital accepted $25M of Ripple's XRP alongside a new fund, and by November Ripple's Xpring arm backed Securitize's $12.75M Series A for asset-backed security tokens. As for Omni itself, the arc ended badly: after burning through roughly $35M, the company shut down in 2019, unable to make equipment rental and on-demand storage economics work.
First-order effects
- Omni gains $25M to expand its store-and-rent model, while Ripple executives convert XRP holdings into equity in a non-crypto consumer startup.
- The deal gives XRP a new use case beyond payments — a token-denominated venture investment that Ripple-aligned investors can point to.
Second-order effects
- Ripple and its executives keep institutionalizing XRP distribution through funds and startups, following the Blockchain Capital acceptance and the Xpring-backed Securitize round.
- Competitors in on-demand storage face a better-capitalized Omni, raising the burn rate required to compete in a logistics-heavy category.
Third-order effects
- Token-denominated venture rounds emerge as a recurring channel for crypto projects to seed their ecosystems, blurring the line between currency promotion and equity investing.
- Omni's eventual shutdown despite $35M+ raised signals that capital-intensive physical storage and rental startups struggle against unit economics that funding alone can't fix — a structural warning for the on-demand logistics category.
The trend: Crypto treasuries are being deployed as venture capital through token-denominated startup rounds, even as the physical on-demand economy those rounds sometimes fund proves economically fragile.