Cardano’s Draper Genesis Cohort Completes Its First Pitch Week

The Genesis cohort completed its four-week in-person program in San Mateo after working with mentors, operators and investors on product development, fundraising preparation and go-to-market strategy. The program is operated by Draper University in partnership with the Cardano Foundation and Orion Fund.

Cardano startups pitch to Draper and Cardano Foundation

Genesis began on August 17 as a four-week pre-accelerator for early-stage teams. Official program materials stated that 14 teams had been selected, although 13 were publicly named.

Pitch week brought founders in front of a panel that included Tim Draper, Andy Tang, representatives from Orion Fund and Stephen Wood, CFO of the Cardano Foundation. Draper University also scheduled 13 presentations for the September 4 Demo Day, alongside a keynote and Q&A with Draper.

The program offers investments of up to $20,000 for a targeted equity stake of roughly 2%. No individual investment amounts, Pitch Day winners or project rankings had been publicly announced by September 6.

Genesis also places participating teams inside the network surrounding Orion Fund, the $80 million ecosystem fund backed by Cardano Foundation and Draper Dragon, without implying that funding from the fund is automatic.

Genesis cohort spans DeFi, payments and infrastructure

The cohort includes projects working across institutional DeFi, payments, compliance, AI agents, merchant tools and Web3 infrastructure.

Harmonic Laboratories is developing GravityDEX and Cardano tooling with an institutional DeFi focus. Ospree is building compliance infrastructure for areas including the Travel Rule and AML requirements, while Lava is developing L-ADA for using staked assets as collateral and liquidity within DeFi applications.

ChatterPay is building payment functionality inside WhatsApp, including transfers involving ADA and USDCx. Agentic Dynamics is focused on payment infrastructure for AI agents, while other teams are working on automated DeFi vaults, on-chain escrow, merchant payments, loyalty systems, wallet technology and Web3 operations.

Two cohort members, ChatterPay and Agentic Dynamics, also won a hackathon held at GitHub’s headquarters shortly before pitch week. That result was separate from the Draper University investment process.

Orion Fund continues working with Genesis founders

Genesis follows an earlier Cardano Founders Residency held with Draper University in 2025, which included 20 teams. The 2026 Genesis structure moves toward an equity-based accelerator model connected to Orion Fund and Draper Dragon.

Following pitch week, Orion Fund said its investment and growth teams would continue working with Genesis founders beyond Demo Day. No publicly disclosed funding rounds or automatic admission into the separate Apex Growth Accelerator had been announced by September 6.

Apex is a separate ten-week program offering investments of up to $70,000 for a targeted equity position of approximately 3.5%.

With the first Genesis pitch cycle completed, the 13 publicly identified teams have moved from structured accelerator work into direct contact with investors and growth teams around Draper University and Orion Fund.

Further outcomes will depend on project-level financing, launches and commercial traction disclosed after the program.