{"id":243522,"date":"2026-09-02T13:09:39","date_gmt":"2026-09-02T18:09:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/ryan-breslow-is-raising-up-to-27m-in-pay-to-play-bridge-funding-to-save-bolt"},"modified":"2026-09-02T13:09:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-02T18:09:39","slug":"ryan-breslow-is-raising-up-to-27m-in-pay-to-play-bridge-funding-to-save-bolt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/09\/ryan-breslow-is-raising-up-to-27m-in-pay-to-play-bridge-funding-to-save-bolt","title":{"rendered":"Ryan Breslow is raising up to $27M in pay-to-play bridge funding to save Bolt"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/ryan-breslow-is-raising-up-to-27m-in-pay-to-play-bridge-funding-to-save-bolt.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Ryan Breslow, the controversial entrepreneur who returned as CEO of Bolt last year after years of <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/07\/21\/bolt-ex-ceo-ryan-breslow-subject-of-sec-probe\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">legal battles<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/03\/11\/bolt-ceo-ryan-breslow-explains-his-troubled-30m-personal-loan-announces-new-super-app\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">clashes<\/a> with investors, refuses to give up on the checkout processing startup he co-founded in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>The company, which hit an $11 billion valuation in early 2022 before plummeting 97% to $300 million, is now raising a bridge round of up to $27 million, Breslow told TechCrunch. Bridge rounds are short-term financings meant to tide a company over until its next major fundraise.<\/p>\n<p>The capital is being raised from existing investors and structured as a convertible note, meaning it will turn into equity at a discount once Bolt closes a future funding round. It also includes a punitive \u201cpay-to-play\u201d provision, meaning backers who don\u2019t participate will lose a large portion of their equity in the company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ryan Breslow, the controversial entrepreneur who returned as CEO of Bolt last year after years of legal battles and clashes with investors, refuses to give up on the checkout processing startup he co-founded in 2014. The company, which hit an $11 billion valuation in early 2022 before plummeting 97% to $300 million, is now raising [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1496],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243522","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243522\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}