Alt

Overview

This profile covers Alt (alt.xyz) — the alternative-asset platform founded by Leore Avidar, who previously created the API company Lob — and not other businesses using the name “Alt,” nor crypto “alt” entities (Boardroom). Alt launched in March 2021 as a marketplace for physical sports trading cards, offering authentication, a Zestimate-style valuation tool called Alt Value, and a temperature- and light-controlled vault for storing cards (TechCrunch). It then built a second act on top of that custody infrastructure: ALT Advance, a lending product letting collectors borrow cash against vaulted cards without selling them, funded by a $200 million debt facility (ABL Advisor).

The marketplace and the vault

Alt entered a trading-card market that had exploded during the pandemic, positioning itself as a GOAT-like marketplace that authenticated transactions and gave buyers confidence the cards they were bidding thousands of dollars on were genuine (TechCrunch). Founder and CEO Leore Avidar, a longtime collector, set out to make acquiring alternative assets as easy as stock-trading apps had made buying equities — including by undercutting rivals’ fee structures at 1.5% of the total sale price including processing fees (TechCrunch).

Alt will authenticate each asset through an in-house team, then store purchased cards in a user’s vault; users can also show off their portfolios through a shareable gallery with high-resolution photos of each collectible (Boardroom). Avidar framed the mission as increasing the transparency and liquidity of alternative assets, arguing that sports cards represented “a great store of value and return uncorrelated with broader public markets” (Boardroom). The launch was backed by more than $31 million: a seed round led by First Round and a Series A led by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s new firm Seven Seven Six, with John Collison and Patrick Collison, Kevin Durant, SV Angel, BoxGroup and Chapter One among the investors (TechCrunch). Cards had to be graded by established groups (PSA, BGS or SGC) before sale, then were sent to Alt’s “Vault” — a light-controlled, temperature-controlled, fire-protected facility Avidar called “the Fort Knox of cards” — where ownership could transfer instantly from buyer to buyer and 99% of cards stayed after transactions, bought as investments rather than display pieces (TechCrunch). Alt also published market data — trending categories, biggest value movers, a card’s sale history and an “Alt value” estimate from its transaction data (TechCrunch).

Eight months later the company raised a $75 million Series B led by Spearhead at a valuation Alt put at over $325 million, backed by Seven Seven Six, Vibe Capital, Breyer Capital, Shrug Capital, Apollo Projects and athletes including Tom Brady, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Alex Morgan, Candace Parker and Marlon Humphrey (TechCrunch). By then it had expanded beyond sports cards to first-edition Charizards and Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, held over $70 million of cards in the vault, employed about 60 people and had hired former eBay collectibles chief Nicole Colombo as its first president (TechCrunch).

From custody to credit: ALT Advance

The vault was never just storage — it was the collateral base for a lending business. In July 2022, after quietly beta-testing card-backed loans, Alt announced ALT Advance, which lets investors borrow cash against vaulted assets without selling them, extending the utility of traditional-asset lending to graded collectibles such as trading cards, watches and sneakers (ABL Advisor). Alt’s head of lending, Mark Ricciardi, said the company planned to extend the product to venture-backed equity interests in pursuit of “unlocking the value of high-quality alternative assets” (ABL Advisor).

To fund the lending, Alt raised $200 million in new debt financing led by Atalaya Capital Management (ABL Advisor). Investor and adviser Alexis Ohanian called the Atalaya partnership a milestone for the alternative-assets industry, while Atalaya principal Brian Moore said the firm’s financial-assets practice was well aligned with Alt’s approach to extending financial services’ reach (ABL Advisor).

What this profile does not claim

• It does not state Alt’s founding year; the timeline begins at the March 2021 public launch, the earliest verified milestone.
• It does not state Alt’s status, revenue or lending-product rollout after 2022; no fully-read independent sources covering later years were found.
• It does not describe the vault’s location or custody arrangements; those were not detailed in the sources read.
• It does not claim anything about other companies named “Alt”; identification as the Leore Avidar-founded alt.xyz platform rests solely on the sources above.