- Up to 15 pre-seed and seed-stage teams will spend 12 weeks working with investors and operators from across the Arbitrum and Robinhood Chain ecosystems, with $100,000 in prizes and a Demo Day expected to bring together more than 50 investors
- More than 900 teams applied for the first cohort earlier this year and its founders have since raised more than $10 million in capital
The Arbitrum Foundation today opened applications for the second cohort of the Arbitrum and Robinhood Chain Mentorship Program. The 12-week program will select up to 15 pre-seed and seed-stage teams building on Arbitrum One or Robinhood Chain, pairing founders with investors and mentors from across the ecosystem and concluding with Demo Day in March 2027.
More than 900 teams applied for the first cohort, which ran for eight weeks from April earlier this year. Thirteen were selected, 10 pitched at Demo Day in July to more than 25 leading venture firms and the cohort has since raised more than $10 million in capital.
Carbon, LayerV, T3tris and Capa shared $100,000 in prizes at Demo Day. Since then, Carbon’s liquidity provider vault has passed $1 million in deposits, T3tris has reached $14 million in total value locked across Arbitrum One and Robinhood Chain, and Capa has secured lead investors for its Series A.
“The mentorship program puts Arbitrum and Robinhood’s ecosystem investors and most experienced builders behind a small group of early-stage teams. Reaching those people is where founders at this stage lose the most time, so the program gives them that access from the first week,” said David Garcia, Ecosystem Lead at the Arbitrum Foundation.
“The second cohort has a wider group of mentors than the first, drawn from the investors and ecosystem partners on the program. We are looking for founders who already have a product live or close to launch and want to build it on Arbitrum One or Robinhood Chain.”
Cohort 2 extends the program from eight weeks to twelve. It opens with an internal demo day at which every company pitches to the mentor group, giving mentors a view of each business before the program begins. Investors and mentors then work with founders throughout the program on positioning, traction and the fundraising story, with the Foundation arranging introductions to venture funds ahead of Demo Day.
Partner-led working sessions address the operational questions of each company across areas including go-to-market, user acquisition, tokenomics, and stablecoin infrastructure. Partners confirmed for the cohort include Pantera, Pendle, Variational, USD.AI, Paxos, Entropy, Offchain and Robinhood Chain.
Robinhood Chain, the dedicated Arbitrum chain built by Robinhood, launched its public mainnet on July 1 and returns as a collaborator for the second cohort, with the Robinhood team working alongside founders throughout the program.
“Robinhood Chain gives builders an environment designed for financial services and tokenised real-world assets, connecting unique use cases to a thriving DeFi ecosystem. Five teams from the first cohort launched on the chain and two of them were among the winners, which tells us the program is attracting strong founders,” said Gaëtan Thabot, Director of Partnerships at Robinhood Crypto.
“Collaborating on a second cohort allows us to connect with the next group of teams building financial products onchain early and give them access to our ecosystem, expertise, and guidance at the outset.”
The program is the final stage of a builder pipeline that has run Open House buildathons and founder houses in Bangalore, New York, London and Singapore over the past year, with winners fast-tracked into the cohort.
“An ecosystem is measured by the businesses that run on it. Concentrating capital, mentors and partners on a small number of serious teams for three months is one of the highest-return things Arbitrum can do to produce more of them,” said A.J. Warner, Chief Strategy Officer at Offchain.
“Offchain builds the technology these companies run on, so working alongside the cohort for the length of the program is as useful to us as it is to the founders. The strongest of them will be among the protocols shaping Arbitrum in a few years’ time.”
Demo Day in March will put the cohort in front of an audience expected to include more than 50 investors, up from more than 25 venture firms in July.
“The demand for a place in the first cohort and where those companies are now say more about how much is being built on Arbitrum than any dashboard metric. The mentorship program is where the strongest of those teams get the ecosystem’s full attention for the length of the program,” said Brendan Ma, Head of Investment Strategy at the Arbitrum Foundation.
“Teams from the first cohort have gone on to raise institutional capital, which is the clearest validation of the model. The second cohort should add to that, both in the quality of the companies coming through and in the depth of deal flow available to investors across the ecosystem.”
Applications are open to pre-seed and seed-stage teams that have a working prototype or early live product and are committed to building on Arbitrum One or Robinhood Chain. They are reviewed on a rolling basis and close on December 6, with the program starting on January 5. Participation, including eligibility for prizes, is subject to the program terms. Further information is available at mentorship.arbitrum.io.
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