Fulgur Ventures partners with Hercle, a Milan-based institutional infrastructure platform building the connective tissue between fiat banking rails, digital assets and stablecoins. Founded in 2019 by Gabriele Sabbatini, Marco Levarato and Arturo Schembri, Hercle today serves more than 200 banks, brokers and payment service providers, giving regulated institutions a single venue to source liquidity, settle digital-asset trades and move money across borders without stitching together fragmented counterparties.

What drew us to Hercle is the depth of its institutional footprint. Cross-border money movement is one of the largest and most under-served markets in finance, and stablecoins have already proven they can compress days into seconds. Hercle is one of the few European players that combines licensed market structure, deep stablecoin liquidity and tier-one banking relationships, the precise mix needed to bring real institutional volume on-chain rather than pilot-scale flows.

This investment fits Fulgur's thesis that Bitcoin and stablecoin rails will progressively absorb the plumbing of global finance. We back teams operating at the interface between regulated capital and open networks, where compliance, liquidity and settlement quality determine who actually wins the market. Hercle's focus on PSPs and banks, rather than retail flow, places it at the layer where treasury operations, FX and remittance economics are decided.

Italy and the wider European Union are entering a defining period for digital-asset regulation. With MiCA live and stablecoin issuance accelerating, institutions need partners who can move with the rulebook rather than around it. Hercle is positioned to be that partner, and we are excited to support Gabriele, Marco, Arturo and the team as they scale across Europe and connect more emerging-market corridors. The future of cross-border settlement is being rebuilt right now, and Hercle is helping write it.