Key Takeaways
Ricardo Salinas anchored a $40 million raise for a bitcoin treasury firm dubbed ORANGE JUICE on July 15, 2026.The company targets businesses with $1 million to $10 million in annual cash flow.Ruben Zweiban will run daily operations after careers at BofA, JP Morgan and the Navy.
Lyn Alden announced the raise on July 15, 2026, from the company’s headquarters in Westport, Connecticut. Its plan differs from a standard private equity fund. Instead of buying businesses, cutting costs, and reselling them within four to seven years, the company intends to hold what it buys indefinitely.
Ricardo Salinas, founder and chairman of the Latin American conglomerate Grupo Salinas, joined as anchor investor. Salinas built a company that serves millions of customers and employs more than 170,000 people across the region.
“Cash flow is king, and you cannot count on governments to protect the value of your money,” Salinas remarked. “This company is built on both, cash flowing companies and a Bitcoin treasury. That is why I am backing this team.”
Ruben Zweiban will run daily operations as the operating partner. Zweiban graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and Oxford, then spent a decade as a Navy SEAL officer with five deployments. He later worked as an investment banker at BofA Securities and as an equity research analyst at JPMorgan Asset Management. Most recently, he served as chief investment officer of a billion-dollar private multi-family office.
A Different Model Than Private Equity
The company plans to target businesses generating $1 million to $10 million in annual cash flow. Sellers get a mix of cash and equity in the new company, letting them keep a stake in future growth. Founders can retire, stay on, or step back gradually.
Nico Lechuga, one of the founding partners, said the model addresses a gap left by traditional buyout funds.
“Building a business takes decades,” Lechuga said. “Founders deserve more than one path when it’s time to transition ownership.”
ORANGE JUICE‘s founding team comes largely from Ego Death Capital, a venture capital firm focused on Bitcoin infrastructure. Booth, Alden, Lechuga, and Andi Pitt all hold partner roles there. Adrian Steckel rounds out the founding group.
Booth built and scaled Builddirect, an online building materials marketplace, before turning to bitcoin investing full-time. Alden is a macro analyst known for her writing on energy markets, monetary policy, and corporate bitcoin adoption.
Cash Flow Feeds the Bitcoin Treasury
Retained earnings from the acquired businesses will fund two things: new acquisitions and bitcoin purchases. The company explained that it plans to use debt and equity issuance sparingly, relying instead on operating cash flow to grow.
That structure sets the company apart from pure bitcoin holding firms, which typically depend on outside capital to keep buying and carry more price volatility as a result. Strategy, the company formerly known as Microstrategy, popularized the corporate bitcoin treasury model starting in 2020. OranjeBTC, a publicly traded firm in Brazil, has built a bitcoin position of roughly 3,900 BTC as of mid-2026 using a similar approach in Latin America.
The company also plans to build an in-house team to help acquired businesses adopt artificial intelligence (AI) tools. Executives said AI is driving one of the largest productivity shifts in decades and that portfolio companies need support navigating it.
Public Listing Planned, But Not as an Exit
ORANGE JUICE intends to pursue a public listing at some point. Unlike a typical initial public offering (IPO) used to cash out early investors, executives framed the listing as a way to give the company a liquid currency for deals and access to capital markets while keeping its holdings intact.
The United States faces a wave of business ownership transitions in the coming decades as owners age out of companies they built. Traditional private equity has drawn criticism for loading acquired businesses with debt and cutting costs aggressively to hit return targets within a fixed fund window. The new company is positioning itself as an option for owners who want their business kept intact rather than flipped.
Legal work on the raise was handled by Latham & Watkins. The company said further details on acquisitions and its bitcoin treasury will follow as deals close.
