Foundation raises $6.4M, launches Passport Prime

Boston-based Foundation closed a $6.4 million funding round led by Fulgur Ventures with participation from Arche Capital. The company said the round brings its total funding to about $16.5 million since launching in 2021. Passport Prime began shipping to pre-order customers in March 2026 and is now available to the public with a starting price of $349.

Passport Prime combines a bitcoin hardware wallet, a FIDO security key, two-factor authentication storage, a secrets vault and 50 gigabytes of encrypted file storage in a single handheld device. Foundation built the device to present information on a dedicated display and to run a small, inspectable operating system rather than depend on prompts in a browser or phone notification.

The device runs KeyOS, a Rust-based microkernel operating system developed over three years. It connects to hosts through QuantumLink, a post-quantum encrypted Bluetooth protocol that the company says uses ML-KEM and ChaCha20-Poly1305 over an isolated chip. Foundation said Passport Prime is manufactured in the United States at an ITAR-compliant facility.

Foundation CEO Zach Herbert described the product as ‘Human Authority Hardware,’ meaning a device kept outside the software environment where an autonomous agent runs so a human can review and approve sensitive actions. He explained the company sees a gap in authorizing high-stakes actions taken by AI agents, beyond the transaction-signing role of traditional hardware wallets and the authentication role of FIDO keys.

Fulgur Ventures partner Oleg Mikhalsky praised Foundation for extending self-custody principles into identity and AI workflows. Arche Capital partner Will Wolf noted the KeyOS release matches the company’s original plan to pair secure hardware with a dedicated operating system for broader account and identity management. Foundation CTO Ken Carpenter said KeyOS makes the device a general trust layer rather than a passive key container.

Alongside the hardware release, Foundation opened KeyOS to outside developers. The company published a software development kit, command-line tooling, documentation, a simulator and a USB-connected MCP server that allows AI coding agents to build and test applications on Passport Prime hardware. Foundation plans to launch a KeyOS app store for users by the end of the second quarter of 2026.

Cake Wallet is the first third-party team to ship an app on KeyOS, providing a cold storage option to its more than one million users. Foundation said additional integrations for bitcoin, identity and AI agent workflows are expected later in 2026.

The hardware security market remains competitive. Ledger and Trezor continue to sell established products; Ledger is developing a roadmap for AI infrastructure while Trezor has emphasized foundational hardware security and quantum resilience. Foundation presents Passport Prime as a combination of multiple security functions, a developer-focused operating system and post-quantum communication protocols.