LeveL Markets, the institutional equities trading venue operator of LeveL ATS, leads a Series A funding round of more than $6 million and will integrate OpenYield’s all-to-all bond marketplace with its equities ATS.
NEW YORK — June 10, 2026 — OpenYield, a bond marketplace bringing an automated, equity-like trading experience to fixed income, said today that it has closed over $6 million in Series A funding and may expand the round with select strategic investors. The investment was led by LeveL Markets with additional participation from Draper Associates, Canapi Ventures and Clocktower Ventures.
The funding comes with a commercial partnership: LeveL Markets, backed by investors including Nasdaq, BlackRock, Citi and Bank of America, will integrate OpenYield into its equities platform, giving LeveL’s institutional clients a direct path to OpenYield’s bond liquidity through connections they already use to trade stocks. The partnership puts OpenYield’s bond prices in front of many of the largest asset managers and broker-dealers in the market, reached through the trading rails they run every day, with nothing new to build.
Founded in 2023 and launched the following year, OpenYield is registered as an alternative trading system (ATS) and operates an all-to-all venue where any participant can trade with any other. The $150 trillion fixed-income market still runs on plumbing built before modern automation. OpenYield was built on a straightforward conviction: Dealers have now developed algorithms to automate liquidity provisioning, so bond trading can finally work the way equity trading does with instant, firm, executable prices in a live order book matched on price and time.
“Most of the technology that powers the bond market was designed for a world where a human picked up the phone,” said Jonathan Birnbaum, founder and CEO of OpenYield. “That world is gone. Dealers now quote bonds in milliseconds, but the venues investors trade on haven’t kept up. We built OpenYield to close that gap, to give fixed income the same firm prices, transparency and clean execution that equity traders take for granted.”
Birnbaum founded OpenYield after a career spanning both institutional trading and consumer finance. He ran fixed-income execution at Bridgewater Associates, was chief operating officer of U.S. credit trading at Morgan Stanley, and later helped build consumer investing platforms as general manager of SoFi Invest and founding chief operating officer of Domain Money. Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Hilton Lipschitz has built trading systems for hedge funds managing billions in fixed-income assets.
OpenYield will use the new capital to:
- Expand the marketplace by adding buyside and sellside firms
- Deepen integrations with institutional order and execution management systems
- Grow its suite of data products powering trading and analysis
- Develop agentic trading workflows
- Advance tokenized bond trading
For LeveL, the deal — its first strategic investment — extends a strategy of putting its equity-market connectivity to work in new asset classes.
“Our partnership with OpenYield is a pivotal step in bringing traditional market standards and efficiencies to the fixed income market,” said Steve Miele, CEO of LeveL Markets. “Through this collaboration, we are creating a more streamlined and accessible trading environment that can broaden participation, improve market access, and enhance the overall investor experience. LeveL Markets is proud to power the technology that will help modernize fixed income markets and unlock new opportunities for investors.”
OpenYield’s ATS has executed almost $2 billion in volume to date across corporate bonds, municipal bonds and U.S. Treasurys. The company has signed more than 60 institutional clients across asset managers, advisors, broker-dealers and hedge funds, representing over $5 trillion in assets under management.
Bond dealers are increasingly using automation and artificial intelligence to quote prices at machine speed, while the buyside, including pension funds, insurers and asset managers, is in the early stages of modernizing how it trades. The shift is especially visible in municipal bonds, one of OpenYield’s most active segments, where customer trading on alternative trading systems has nearly quadrupled since 2021. Despite that increase, the potential for growth remains enormous. Separately managed accounts (SMAs), which require trading many small bond positions efficiently, are among the fastest-growing products in asset management. That demand for fast, low-cost, programmable execution is exactly what OpenYield was built to serve.
About OpenYield
OpenYield is a fixed-income marketplace delivering equity-like efficiency to bond trading. It operates an all-to-all alternative trading system (ATS) with firm, executable prices, transparent order-book matching, and API-first connectivity built for automated trading across U.S. Treasurys, municipal bonds and corporates. The marketplace is operated by OpenYield Trading LLC, a broker-dealer registered with the SEC and MSRB and a member of FINRA/SIPC, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of OpenYield Inc. The company was founded in 2023 and is based in New York. Learn more at openyld.com.
About LeveL Markets
LeveL Markets, LLC is a dynamic securities marketplace and technology solutions provider, and the broker-dealer owner of LeveL ATS. LeveL Markets is dedicated to driving innovation through collaboration with its unique ecosystem of buy- and sell-side clients. Founded in 2006, LeveL Markets is backed by investors including Nasdaq, BlackRock, Citi and Bank of America. LeveL Markets’ innovative approach to serving the investment community is highlighted by LeveL Connect — a robust buy-side connectivity gateway offering international trading opportunities across the investment spectrum, and its comprehensive range of customizable tools built to serve both institutional and sell-side communities. To learn more, visit LeveLMarkets.com.
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