Keeta first announced its $17 million funding round on June 6, 2023, through the U.S. news media PR Newswire. The press release explicitly stated: "Keeta, a novel global payment platform that provides instant and secure cross-border currency transactions, today announced its official launch, with support from investors including Eric Schmidt and Steel Perlot Management, LLC." Consequently, Schmidt's name became one of the most weighty talking points within the $KTA community.

Burning Cash to Win Hearts

Eric Schmidt's Steel Perlot company was seen as one of Schmidt's most openly involved entrepreneurial platforms post his retirement from Google. Steel Perlot's founder and CEO, Michelle Ritter, was also his extramarital girlfriend. The two met in 2020 when Ritter was a junior at Columbia Law School. Quickly, with Schmidt's funding, connections, and influence, Ritter founded Steel Perlot, claiming to incubate the next generation of companies in the "AI + Blockchain + Payment" space.

Ritter, who graduated from Columbia Law School in 2021, had previously worked as a cybersecurity research assistant at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and interned at the law firm Skadden. She claimed to have met Schmidt through law school connections. According to a report by the New York Post that year, they began dating when they attended a Virgin Galactic rocket launch event together, and shortly after, they hosted a party at the luxurious New York club Zero Bond, officially launching Steel Perlot.

Over the intertwined years of romance and business, Schmidt not only provided about $140 million in funding to Steel Perlot but also introduced Ritter to his social and investment circles, including attending events with Sam Altman from OpenAI and Alexandr Wang from Scale AI. He even arranged for Ritter's parents to live next to his mansion in Belleair.

In a report by "The Information," after Ritter and Schmidt met in 2020, the two began discussing grand ideas about business strategy. Eventually, Ritter presented her vision for Steel Perlot—a new type of hedge fund using advanced trading strategies while also incubating startups involved in payments, cryptocurrency, artificial intelligence, and the creator economy.

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