Erebor Bank hits $1.1 billion in deposits in 7 weeks

• Key insight: Erebor Bank reached $1 billion in deposits within two months of opening.
• Expert quote: “Erebor is a unique banking startup with deep connections to sources of funding from the personal, political and business networks of its founders.” —Columbia professor Todd Baker
• Supporting data: The digital bank acquired $970 million in interest-bearing deposits and $127.5 million in non-interest-bearing deposits between Feb. 8 and March 31, 2026.

Newly formed Erebor Bank has accumulated $1.1 billion in deposits within its first quarter of operations.

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The Columbus, Ohio-based digital bank reported $970 million in interest-bearing deposits and $127.5 million in non-interest-bearing deposits as of March 31, 2026, according to a call report submitted to regulators and made public recently. 

The deposits were accumulated in only seven weeks, as Erebor began accepting deposits in the second week of February. The speed at which Erebor Bank hit the $1 billion deposit mark rapidly outpaced other U.S. digital challenger banks that often spend years working toward that milestone on their balance sheets, according to Callum Bedos, founder and CEO of higher education payments fintech Backpack.

One exception to this timeline is Robinhood’s Banking product, which hit $1 billion in deposits within four months of its November 2025 launch and reported $2 billion in deposits in the investment company’s first-quarter 2026 earnings report.

Todd Baker, a senior fellow at the Richman Center for Business, Law & Public Policy at Columbia University and managing principal of Broadmoor Consulting, told American Banker that he was unsurprised at Erebor’s strong start in deposit acquisition.

“Erebor is a unique banking startup, with deep connections to sources of funding from the personal, political and business networks of its founders,” he said. “It is no surprise that they have come out of the gates fast with early success raising deposits.”

Erebor, founded by prominent tech figures such as Palmer Luckey and Peter Thiel to service tech startup businesses with a similar business plan to Silicon Valley Bank, received a de novo charter from Comptroller Jonathan Gould in early February of this year after getting approved for the charter in October and receiving FDIC insurance in December. 

“They can’t readily be compared with any existing commercial banks, and they have learned the lessons of Silicon Valley Bank and used deposit sweeps and other strategies to avoid excessive uninsured deposit risk,” Baker said. “Most of their early deposits are interest-bearing, although we can expect the percentage of demand deposits to grow over time.”

The digital bank began its operations less than a year after submitting its initial charter application last June. Erebor officially opened for business on Sunday, Feb. 8, with Luckey telling the Wall Street Journal at the time that Erebor’s Sunday opening was a nod to its focus on integrating blockchain technology to settle transactions at any time, including outside typical business hours.

Bedos told American Banker that the initial influx of deposits could be ascribed to the large portfolio of businesses that Erebor’s founders are involved in.

“When the people who finance the next wave of tech also happen to own the bank serving them,” he said, “you get $1.1 billion in seven weeks.”

However, Bedos noted that the call report doesn’t specify account-level details for the deposits and his theory is “purely speculative.”

“It makes the next two or three call reports really interesting,” he continued. “If they go to a billion in the first few months and then taper off, then I think that validates the thesis a lot. If they continue to run up a ton, then it might just be that they have those sorts of partnerships and reputations behind them and are doing more of that.”

As a former member of SoFi’s corporate development team, Bedos attested to Erebor’s rapid growth as no easy feat.

“I was lucky enough to be part of the team at SoFi launching our deposit products and becoming a bank through acquisition,” Bedos said. “Pre-bank-charter, we took roughly three years to accumulate our first $1 billion in deposits before getting [a] national bank charter. I saw first-hand how difficult it is to do and how impressive this is.”